A gangster called Capitalism and its vanquisher The Common Good

Once upon a time, a powerful unkillable beast menaced the nation. It had to be tamed. It could only be tamed by a robust ethos of the common good. This gradually emerged: a new democratic spirit was born! But soon critics popped up, complaining about aspects of the new order, calling it stifling, limiting, pompous and dated. They gained power: the fools uncaged the beast! For three decades it has trampled all over public life, declaring the profit motive to be the only realism; it has unbalanced industry, empowered reckless bankers, and forced public services to dance to its commercial tunes; it has utterly subverted the left, which dared not challenge it, but rather trusted that it would bring universal benefits. It didn’t: it brought rising insecurity, and hideous new levels of inequality, and environmental doom. Worst of all, the beast has got inside our heads, so that the idea of re-taming it strikes us as sentimental naivety.