The Revolution of Civil Society. Challenging Neo-Liberal Orthodoxy: the Development of the Progressive State

In this book, Michael Lloyd sets out a comprehensive analysis and counter-narrative to the neo-liberal market capitalist orthodoxy. He uses Friedrich Hayek, Margaret Thatcher's favourite adviser, as a 'stalking horse'. The aim is to argue against not only neo-liberalism, but also its philosophical and political antecedents deriving from John Locke and from Adam Smith, but reflected in Hayek and other neo-liberal advocates to the present day. A new social enlightenment is required, one which sweeps away the foundations of the liberal individualist enlightenment which persist today in the form of neo-liberal, market economics and its philosophical underpinning. In so doing it will also attack the false prospectus of Trump, Le Pen, Farage, and other populist nationalists. However, it will also challenge some of the shibboleths of the Left such as its naive anti-elitism, and its current preoccupation with identity politics rather than class politics.