The romantic roots of economic rationalism

Over the last thirty years, a significant number of both progressive and conservative commentators have expressed concern over the impact of neoliberal, free-market policies. In Australia such policies, most commonly involving deregulation, privatization and low direct taxation, have been collected under the label ‘economic rationalism’. The most resolute critics allege that these policies have undermined traditional civic values, radicalized communities, and prioritized the corporate state at the expense of democracy. They credit economic rationalism with the periodic convulsions that have beleaguered the global economy from at least the end of the 1970s, the global financial crisis of 2008, the present financial turmoil in Europe, and the near systematic repudiation of the social contract which European governments put in place after the Second World War.