ABSTRACT
MacIntyre wrote against the backdrop of a period which culminated in the 1970s; an era of governmental social engineering. The 1980s were to prove radically different. They were a time when many agreed with MacIntyre in his diagnosis – bureaucracy was assailed from various quarters of the political spectrum – but instead of a return to notions of community and the need to construct an all encompassing image of social totalities and live a life of ‘virtue’, the official solution
was to destroy governmental regulation and dissolve bureaucracy in favour of the market.
