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Free market capitalism has created a divided American society. Conservative economic and social policy thinking drove the Right's Project from 1980 to its collapse in 2008, leaving the world in ruins and fascism on the march. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society challenges the Left to create new forms of the market economy that promote efficiency and equality while permanently thwarting concentrated power. Many recent commentators have offered policy recommendations based on existing economic institutions. By contrast, this book calls for root-and-branch changes to the inherent structure of American capitalism. The Vision of a Real Free Market Society: Re-Imagining American Freedom presents a Left-egalitarian case for limited government that overcomes the failures of conservatism while rescuing economic justice from the weaknesses of tax and transfer liberalism. The book explains why the system fails so many Americans in so many different ways, and outlines how we can build a better economy that simultaneously promotes freedom and social justice while crippling the powers of America's oligarchs. Exploring the idea of a left-wing case for strong but small government, the book makes the case for fundamental reforms that will lead to a truly free and fair society. This provocative book will be of great relevance to anyone with an interest in politics, philosophy or economics, and will challenge readers to rethink their assumptions concerning the prospects for combining justice with fairness in the modern world.

"The Political Economy of Hope and Fear fills an important intellectual gap in writing on race by developing a hard-nosed economic analysis of the links between competitive capitalism, racial hostility, and persistent racial inequality in post-Civil Rights America. Andrews speaks to the anger and frustration that African Americans feel in the face of the nation's abandonment of racial equality as a worthy objective by showing how the considerable difficulties that black Americans face are related to fundamental changes in the economic fortunes of the U.S." "The Political Economy of Hope and Fear is an economist's plea for unsentimental thinking on the matter of race to replace the mixture of liberal hand wringing and conservative mythmaking that passes for serious analysis about the nation's racial predicament."--Jacket.

As I write, in late April of 2009, the citizens of rich capitalist societies are watching their jobs, wealth, and life plans being laid waste by an economic collapse every bit as ferocious as the crisis of the 1930s. Conservative parties and policies that only a short while ago were called midwives to an age of limitless prosperity built on free markets, small governments, and a stoical acceptance of the sufferings of the poor are now objects of popular ridicule and disgust. Employment and incomes are falling at a sickening rate, with the official American unemployment rate rising from 4.8 percent of the labor force in January 2008 to 8.5 percent as of April 2009. Even the most sober economic analysts are suggesting that one in ten American workers may be out of work by year's end. A housing boom turned bust has destroyed a global financial system once cited as proof that unregulated finance could convert greed into a cornucopia for the masses—if only ham-handed governments kept out of business affairs.

The economic "Great Recession" of 2008/09 has seen skyrocketing unemployment, a lowering of the standard of living, & a near-collapse of the financial industry. This recession was brought about by unrestrained capitalism, and, according to the author, could spell the end of the neoliberal economic model, which has been dominant in global economics since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In order to cripple the market-fundamentalist right wing in American politics, the left will have to come up with an economic model that is dynamic & sensitive to the market, all the while balancing the needs between labor & business. As the Great Depression of the 1930s showed, & the current recession is showing, market fundamentalism is unstable, & is incompatible with equality or social peace. Adapted from the source document.

Seven US academics and commentators set out their hopes and suggestions for President Obama's first 100 days in office