As part of this series celebrating PRIME’s tenth anniversary, we are looking forward to the next ten years. This contribution by Laurie Macfarlane looks at the future role of the state.
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John Maynard Keynes famously wrote: ​“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
For the past 40 years, society has been the slave of a not-yet-defunct set of economic ideas. These ideas have shaped the way that people think about the economy, and had a powerful effect on politics and government policy.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the role of the state. According to neoclassical theory, goods and services are most efficiently produced by private firms operating in a competitive market, and

The Berlaymont building, Brussels HQ of the European Commission, refracted. Image copyright Jeremy Smith

This article is cross-posted from Open Democracy, first published 17th January 2019. It follows up his earlier article from December, “Labour’s Brexit trilemma: in search of the least bad outcome”.The debate about Lexit is now irrelevant. The only form of Brexit that is possible is one that will entrench the status quo or empower something far worse. The left must unite against it. Although Theresa May has survived to fight another day as Prime Minister, the of her Brexit deal in parliament has