Hayek, for example, on a visit to Pinochet’s Chile, said he preferred a “liberal dictatorship” to “a democratic government devoid of liberalism”. In unguarded moments, the warlords and their supporters go all the way. They fetishise something they call “liberty”, which turns out to mean total freedom for plutocrats, at society’s expense. These books sweep away social complexity and other people’s interests. Its justifying ideology was formulated by Friedrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty and by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of profit-making. This sees all restraints on accumulation – including taxes, regulations and the public ownership of essential services – as illegitimate. The second could be described as warlord capitalism. It can coexist with a tame and feeble form of democracy. It seeks an accommodation with the administrative state, and benefits from stability, predictability and the regulations that exclude dirtier and rougher competitors. The first could be described as housetrained capitalism. So it is worth repeating the big question: why are we doing this to ourselves? I believe the answer is that Brexit is the outcome of a civil war within capitalism.īroadly speaking, there are two dominant forms of capitalist enterprise.
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