The backdoor corporate comeback

It is hard to argue with Ian Bremmer's starting assumption that proponents of free market capitalism have a problem, after the financial crisis and recession, in making their case to sceptics in the developing world. Yet it is a very big jump from there to his suggestion that state capitalism in the developing world threatens free markets and the future of the global economy.

As for the title of his book, which announces the end of the free market and posits open warfare between states and corporations, one can only say it is wildly over the top. Equally questionable is whether state capitalism, defined as "a system in which the state plays the role of leading economic actor and uses markets primarily for political gain", is as novel as Bremmer claims. Mussolini's brand of statist economic management would fit perfectly with that description.

(...) this remains very much in the genre of the scare story book. The risk in such books is that, like Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber's Le D éfi Americain, they choose the wrong target. Or they over-hype the scare in the interests of making a bigger splash. The End Of The Free Market falls clearly into the latter camp.