Economics and the Assault on the Market Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira

State and market are institutions of society – its instruments for collective action, the main tools each society has to attain its objectives. The state is the fundamental instrument; and the market, socially constructed and politically regulated, is its complement. While liberalism emerged in the 18^th century to fight an autocratic state, neoliberalism mounted a political assault against the state in the name of the market, and eventually also attacked the market. Neoclassical macroeconomics and public choice theory were the meta-ideologies that gave to this assault a “scientific” and mathematical allure.

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