A sweeping history of how Thatcher and Reagan’s market fundamentalism reshaped Britain and America and gave rise to today’s right-wing populism
A sweeping history of how Thatcher and Reagan’s market fundamentalism reshaped Britain and America and gave rise to today’s right-wing populism
In the late 1970s, both Britain’s Labour Party and America’s Democratic Party campaigned to preserve the postwar order of strong unions, robust public spending, and government regulation—and lost. In their place rose Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who forced their countrymen to reconsider deeply held assumptions about taxes, spending, regulation, immigration, and war. Both enacted policies rooted in hostility to government and taxation that would define the next half-century of politics.
James Cronin and Jonathan Schneer trace how market fundamentalism secured its purchase: promising to control inflation and promote economic growth, appealing to common-sense suspicion of taxes and bureaucracy, and forging an alliance with social conservatism on race and social policy. Thatcherism and Reaganism sparked intense opposition but ultimately, even the center-left critics have accepted elements of their program.
Crucially, Cronin and Schneer track how market fundamentalism paved the way for the right-wing populism now present on both sides of the Atlantic, and the long-term failure of its opponents to conceive an alternative to either. Accessibly written and cogently argued, this is an essential account of the origins and ascent of market fundamentalism, or neoliberalism, its decades-long grip on politics, and its legacy.