The ongoing backlash against neoliberalism began as a limited critique of economic policies associated with Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and their Third Way heirs. Now, “neoliberalism” stands for everything from capitalism to liberalism in toto. A nuanced defence of the post-1980s Western economic order would therefore be both timely and interesting. Johan Norberg’s The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World is not that book.
The problems begin early – the second page, in fact. Norberg, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington DC, considers The Communist Manifesto. “Marx and Engels were right,” he says, “when they observed in that other manifesto, the communist one of 1848, that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined and, with infinitely improved communications and accessible goods, free markets had torn down feudal structures and national narrow-mindedness… Marx and Engels realised much better than socialists today that the free market is a formidable progressive force.”
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