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.