London Review of Books

“Liberal ideology has tended to duck the problem of capitalism altogether, opting instead to imagine that ‘economic life’ (i.e. competitive egalitarian markets) still rules the roost. This myopia is manifest in the economics curricula of major universities, which despite the best efforts of various campaigns and the Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking have continued to exclude theories which emphasise power, uncertainty, monopoly and instability, and clung to an orthodoxy in which economic activity is chiefly determined by prices and incentives. Politicians, meanwhile, cleave to liberal fairy tales about making work pay, social mobility and ownership for all, which are increasingly divorced from a reality of in-work poverty, unearned wealth and spiralling rents. And financial services masquerade as just another ‘sector’ among many, selling their wares in a marketplace like humble shopkeepers.”