Part II - The Anti-citizen 1975–1990
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
‘It is not individuals who are set free by free competition; it is, rather, capital which is set free.’
Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973 (1857–1858), p. 650.In 1975 Keynesian economic management collapsed, and the broadening of citizenship through public programs began to fall away. Given that citizenship had been identified with the extension of careers and consumption it was probably inevitable that when growth and full employment faltered and opportunities dried up, social competition would increase and solidarity would decline. This was fertile ground for the market liberal economists in the New Right such as Hayek and Friedman. The agenda of government was reset (chapters 4 and 5). At the high point of the ‘anti-citizen’ in the second half of the 1980s greed was good, government was corporatised, the public interest had become the global economic market, and official support for the education programs of the 1970s had begun to collapse (chapter 6).
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- Educating AustraliaGovernment, Economy and Citizen since 1960, pp. 71 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997