By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the political, economic and moral order of neoliberalism had no effective competing ideology or alternative political praxis. Francis Fukuyama, though widely criticised, remains an iconic advocate of ‘the goodness of liberal democracy, and of the principles on which it is based’. He concedes that liberal democracies ‘are plagued by a host of problems’ such as unemployment, drugs, pollution and crime, and he recognises that discontent arises (from both Left and Right) over the ‘continuing tension’ between liberty and equality. Yet, he follows earlier writers, such as Daniel Bell, to contend that there is agreement on ends, that there are no ‘large causes for which to fight’. Neoliberal capitalism has provided not only the keys to how economies could, and should, be coordinated on a world scale but it had also captured the public imagination. It had become the common sense of public policy applicable not only to the ways that economies should be coordinated, but more generally to how societies should be managed and organised.

That said, I have identified systemic faults that are more than secondary problems. These are: the recurring economic crises of capitalism; the unjustifiably unequal levels of wealth and income both within and between countries; the social disruption caused by market processes, particularly unemployment, underemployment and migration; the deficiencies of democratic government; environmental unsustainability and ecological destruction; economic and political conflicts between the core, semi-core and periphery of the world system, and deficient mechanisms to maintain peace and prevent war. Any alternative to the neoliberal approach has to address these systemic problems. One should not, however, attribute all the world's shortcomings to ‘global neoliberal capitalism’. Many dilemmas predate, or are independent of, neoliberalism or globalisation. Any alternative may not be able to address all of these issues, and solutions not only take time but often give rise to other problems. Global capitalism, nevertheless, is the political and economic casing in which crises occur.

In earlier chapters I outlined liberal capitalism and five alternatives – selfsustaining communities, social democracy, state-capitalism, state-controlled capitalism, and state socialism. Appendix 16A summarises and compares the six economic formations. These models illustrate the major characteristics of these social formations.