Introduction

For at least three decades it has been the conventional wisdom in policy circles that free markets are the best means to bring about economic growth, employment, and development. While generally not the dominant mainstream view from the early 1930s to the mid-1970s, the laissez faire perspective on the dynamics of modern capitalism gained increased currency in the crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. The elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher seemed to have provided an international “seal of approval” for neoliberal policies in which all social and economic priorities of governments had to be subsumed under the logic of free markets. “There Is No Alternative” ¹ was the cri de coeur of the New Right against what were seen as the excesses of the Welfare State and the Developmental State in an economic atmosphere in which any criticisms of policies were marginalized in the name of “economic efficiency”. Then, as now, the way out of a major economic crisis was via deregulation, privatization, and tax reductions on property income. All policy alternatives that deviated from what Thomas Friedman calls the Golden Straitjacket of neoliberalism ² were seen as soft-headed at best and dangerously “socialistic” at worst. ³