The Free Market Is Making All Our Problems Worse, Not Better
The world is on fire all around us. The free market can’t put that fire out — only massive state intervention in the economy can.
President Ronald Reagan meets with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 16, 1988. (National Archives and Records Administration / Wikimedia Commons)
Mainstream politicians these days are constantly looking for excuses to justify their divergence from market dogma. From the pandemic to the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine and growing inflation, ever-new crises are forcing policymakers to use heavy state intervention, which neoliberals saw as their sworn enemy, to prop up markets.
These interventions are justified as emergency measures necessary to guarantee continued economic operations before a coveted return to market normality — which is, however, always postponed. Just witness the European Central Bank saying in April it would stop purchasing bonds, only to announce a new bond-buying to address ballooning borrowing costs in countries like Italy.
No Going Back to the Old Normal
To date, the state interventionism we have seen coming from both center left and center right over the last decade and more clearly since the explosion of the COVID pandemic has closely followed this logic of facilitating a return to “normal market conditions.” By now, however, it has become apparent that there is no way to go back to the old normal; economic conditions have drastically changed and the premises and expectations that accompanied the era of neoliberal globalization do not offer any credible guidance anymore. Faced with this farcical attempt by the political mainstream to use state interventionism to restore market society and protect wealth, the Left should use this opportunity to reclaim the socialist tradition of progressive state interventionism, as a means to transform society and shift power relations.
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