What does free market collectivism mean for the Left?
William Davies William Davies 2007 The Left often takes comfort in defining its values in contrast to the atomised individualism promoted by free market liberals. Where the market requires us to behave as isolated financial calculators, the Left invites us to work in concert with one another, using democratic mechanisms to identify and achieve our shared goals. Marx recognised that for capitalism to exist there must be labour markets, and for labour markets to exist we must be sufficiently individualised to sell our labour in one-off transactions. Consumerism complements this drift to atomism further. In the late 20th century this bundle of free market economics and individualist ideology was all thrown under the umbrella term ‘neo-liberalism’. This portrayal may be useful in mobilising people, but it hides as much as it reveals. After all, have neo-liberal governments not spent much of the post-Keynesian era – and especially the post-911 era – gradually eroding individual rights? Were
