State and market are institutions of society - its instruments for collective action, the main tools each society has to attain its objectives. The state is the fundamental instrument; and the market, socially constructed and politically regulated, is its complement. While liberalism emerged in the 18th century to fight an autocratic state, neoliberalism mounted a political assault against the state in the name of the market, and eventually also attacked the market. Neoclassical macroeconomics and public choice theory were the meta-ideologies that gave to this assault a ''scientific'' and mathematical allure.

 
January 12, 2010.