Commentary
The moral justification for markets finds itself on the defensive in the face of aggressive challenges issuing from progressives but also from economic nationalists on the right. Many of those on the right don’t understand themselves to be challenging markets as such—only certain economic forces that, they contend, have drained the middle class of its vitality, produced excessive concentrations of power in certain sectors, and that regularly challenge and undermine America’s cultural order. What the economic nationalists and progressives share in common is the position that markets in the post-Cold War period have failed and require a substantial degree of government intervention via industrial policy, child and family subsidies, health-care programs, and a much tighter nexus among corporations, workers, and the government.