Readers of The Economist and other such august publications have encountered report after report in recent years lamenting, celebrating or coolly analyzing the demise of neoliberalism. One might think the tide has turned and social-democratic alternatives to the gospel of “free markets” have gained enough intellectual and legislative ground to become conventional wisdom.
It certainly does look as if the left has been winning what the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci called the “war of position,” whereby the emergence of a new “common sense” changes political reality (at least where majority rule and the consent of the governed determine political possibilities). In the United States, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Bernie Sanders, the “great resignation,” the rehabilitation of industrial policy and the new unionism have indeed changed the way Americans perceive the role of markets.
Likewise, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of inequality found answers in the form of income redistribution, while new ideas about employment and education fundamentally altered mainstream thinking. And in the preceding decade, a broken health care system and labor market made Medicare for All and massive government spending on infrastructure or a Green New Deal seem like obvious solutions to substantial majorities of Americans.
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