“The role of thinkers,” Milton Friedman wrote, “is primarily to keep options open, to have available alternatives, so when the brute force of events makes a change inevitable, there is an alternative available to change it.”

Spontaneous Order: Looking Back at Neoliberalism

By Tim Barker - Winter 2014

Markets in the Name of Socialism:

The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism

by Johanna Bockman

Stanford University Press, 2011, 352 pp.

Masters of the Universe:

Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics

by Daniel Stedman Jones

Princeton University Press, 2012, 432 pp.

“The role of thinkers,” Milton Friedman wrote, “is primarily to keep options open, to have available alternatives, so when the brute force of events makes a change inevitable, there is an alternative available to change it.” The persistence of neoliberalism after the “brute force” of the crisis suggests the failure of the alternatives currently available. History books can’t by themselves provide these alternatives, but they can keep a sense of contingency and possibility alive. Though those with informed objections to market socialism (or to socialism altogether) will not be converted by Bockman’s monograph, her research offers an important historical complement to recent attempt to revisit the conventional wisdom about neoclassical methodology, socialist politics, and market economics. If these debates can be sustained and diffused more widely, the left might find a better way to respond to the next crisis.