“Privatization”: Thatcherite Panacea

Selling state-owned industries has become a policy throughout the world. In Britain, “privatization” is nothing less than a bid for a new Conservative hegemony. By looking at three prime goals of the policy—depoliticization of industrial policy, weakening the base of the Labour party, reasserting capitalist ideology—we can better understand the policy and its failure. In particular, a look at one of the supposed victories of the Thatcher revolution reveals the incapacity of free-market nostalgia to confront the structural crisis of the present period.

It is easy to overemphasize the extent of British postwar consensus around the welfare state. Nevertheless, there remains in Britain general commitment to full employ...