Raymond Plant, Kenneth Hoover

This volume describes and challenges the ideological basis of the free-market right. The agenda for both right and left is set by the terms of the free-market doctrines that have displaced the post-war consensus politics of liberal capitalism. No other book considers in such depth conservative ideas and policies on both sides of the Atlantic. It provides the first clear account of the distinction between conservative and other forms of capitalism. It also examines the fault lines dividing opposing camps within conservative capitalism and their consequences for domestic policy in Britain and the US. Linking political theory and public policy, it is one of the few critical appraisals of the New Right based on a clear understanding of what the arguments for the free market really are.

Part 1. Conservative Capitalism as Ideology 1. Conservative Capitalism and its Adversaries 2. The Political Economy of Conservative Capitalism 3. The Critique of the Welfare State 4. Traditionalists and Individualists: Conflict in the Movement Part 2. Implementation and Appraisal 5. The Rise of Conservative Capitalism in the United States 6. The Impact of Conservative Capitalism in the United States 7. The Rise of Conservative Capitalism in Britain 8. The Implementation of Conservative Capitalism in Britain 9. Privatization in Britain Part 3. Responses from the Left 10. The Market and the State 11. A View from the Left: the United States 12. A View from the Left: Great Britain