The British electorate expressed dissatisfaction with the nation's development path and the political class through the Brexit referendum in 2016. A decade later, on June 22, Starmer somberly announced his resignation as Prime Minister, a mere two years after leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory. Looking back at the political careers of the last six British Prime Ministers, not a single one has managed to serve a full term. Why has this Labour leader, once held in high hopes and who vowed to correct the course of Conservative governance, become yet another fleeting figure in Downing Street?
The reason for this "revolving door" of prime ministers in Britain may lie in the long-term misalignment between the neoliberal model and the functions of the state. Since the Thatcherite reforms of the 1980s, Britain has maintained a neoliberal model for forty years. While it achieved economic growth, it also accumulated problems such as a proliferation of low-wage jobs, severe deindustrialization, and significant wealth inequality. At the level of political economy, the market under a liberal capitalist system cannot independently shoulder the function of social integration. Only after the state can meet the general prerequisites for maintaining capitalist production do class relations manifest as the non-political relationship between wage labor and capital. Precisely because of this, successive British cabinets, from the Blair Labour government to the Cameron coalition government, have actively or passively attempted to correct or amend the neoliberal model.
In recent years, the trend in Britain of using government strategy to enhance economic quality and guide industrial development has become increasingly pronounced. This has led to a strengthening of the state's socio-economic functions, gradually aligning with global developmental trends. To analyze this predicament at a deeper level, the author introduces the perspective of "late capitalism," pointing out that upon entering this stage, the political-economic duality of the state characteristic of the "liberal capitalist" era has disappeared. The functions of the state now include both filling the gaps left by the market and intervening in the accumulation process to compensate for its politically possible consequences. In other words, the state's reinforcement of intervention to ensure systemic stability and aid national technological development has become a somewhat inevitable choice.
Throughout history, the problems that emerged in British economic and social development under the neoliberal model stemmed precisely from the weakening of state functions. Following the hasty conclusion of the Starmer era, whether Britain can truly escape the neoliberal crisis in the future still faces a severe test.
Correcting Neoliberalism: A Study of the New Strategic Direction of the British Government
In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher implemented an authoritarian-flavored neoliberal reform in Britain. The content included implementing monetarist macroeconomic policies, advancing supply-side privatization processes, and emphasizing social security reforms focused on individual responsibility, with authoritarianism mainly manifested in suppressing trade unions. In the late 1990s, the New Labour government, styling itself as pursuing a "Third Way," discarded the "authoritarian" aspects of the Thatcher government but only made minor corrections to the outcomes of neoliberal economic and social reforms.
After the Conservative Party returned to power in 2010, the three successive Prime Ministers—Cameron, May, and Johnson—did not radically roll back the policy adjustments made during the Labour administration. In effect, the Conservative and Labour parties reached a new consensus on maintaining Britain's neoliberal model. Britain's neoliberal reforms were implemented against the backdrop of the 1970s, marked by the failure of Keynesian macroeconomic control, national economic stagnation coexisting with inflation ("stagflation"), persistently high unemployment rates, and the worsening "British disease." These reforms played a role in curbing inflation, restoring economic growth, and reducing unemployment.
Over the subsequent forty years, Britain, while advancing the neoliberal model, generally maintained stable economic growth with low inflation and unemployment. However, three increasingly evident problems also emerged: first, relatively low-quality economic growth with significant volatility and many low-wage jobs; second, severe deindustrialization and heavy reliance on external markets; third, relatively large wealth gaps and relatively low social equity. These issues are inseparable from the neoliberal ideology that advocated shrinking government functions, cutting public economic and social expenditures, and weakening the state's socio-economic role.
After the 2016 Brexit referendum, Britain faced pressure to reconfigure its economy and society. From Theresa May to the Johnson government, attempts were made to introduce new measures at the strategic government level, striving to address the problems brought by the neoliberal model to Britain.
Using Government Strategy to Enhance Economic Quality
After the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, Britain's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) maintained stable growth, with its economic scale roughly on par with France. Following the 2016 Brexit referendum, Britain's GDP growth rate was not low among major European powers. According to EU statistics, in 2016, Britain's GDP was £1,994.712 billion (approximately €2,222.109 billion), equivalent to 70.88% of Germany's (€3,134.740 billion) and 99.46% of France's (€2,234.129 billion) during the same period. After Brexit, Britain's economic growth slowed somewhat but remained slightly higher than Germany's and slightly lower than France's. In 2019, Britain's GDP was £2,214.362 billion (approximately €2,466.799 billion), equivalent to 71.52% of Germany's (€3,449.050 billion) and 98.33% of France's (€2,425.708 billion), maintaining its position as Europe's third-largest economy.
However, compared to Germany and France, the quality of Britain's economic growth is relatively low. First, the level of industrial investment is low. "Britain is a country where capital exports exceed imports. Foreign multinational capital mainly invests in manufacturing, rarely bringing the high-value-added, R&D-intensive elements characteristic of globalized production... Britain can attract labor-intensive investment but is not adept at attracting capital-intensive investment." This makes Britain's manufacturing sector relatively less competitive internationally, positioned lower on the global value chain than countries like Germany and France.
Second, relatively low R&D investment leads to insufficient industrial innovation capacity, further constraining Britain's international competitiveness. Third, employment quality is relatively poor. Within Britain's neoliberal model, "low investment and slow innovation are compensated for by long-term low wages and longer working hours... The British economy creates jobs, but most of these jobs are part-time, low-skilled, and low-paid." In recent years, Britain's employment rate has been lower than Germany's, and its unemployment rate higher than Germany's, indicating that despite adopting a "flexible employment model" earlier, Britain is losing its competitive advantage in the labor market.
There are many reasons for Britain's relatively low economic growth quality, but the neoliberal model has indeed had a significant negative impact. First, the deregulation of finance led to large amounts of investment flowing into the financial and service sectors, resulting in long-term underinvestment in other industries. Second, low state investment in industrial sectors and the prevalence of small and medium-sized enterprises after privatization have suppressed growth in R&D investment. Third, the state's primary means of promoting employment has been enhancing labor market "flexibility," essentially increasing the quantity of jobs at the expense of job quality. In other words, to improve the quality of Britain's economic growth, it is necessary to reduce the weakening and constraints neoliberalism imposes on the state's economic and social functions, increase government industrial investment and funding for R&D, and safeguard the basic needs of low-income groups.
Using Government Strategy to Guide Industrial Development
As the former "workshop of the world," Britain's industrial development in the 20th century long suffered from structural issues such as "outdated production sectors, conservative technology, and backward management methods." The neoliberal reforms of the 1980s not only failed to resolve these problems but also weakened the state's guiding role in industrial development. Currently, compared to Germany and France, Britain faces more severe industrial structural problems.
First, the degree of "deindustrialization" is relatively high. The proportion of manufacturing value-added to GDP has declined rapidly. Currently, Britain's manufacturing output is only about 20% of Germany's, lower than Italy's and France's. Second, the industrial layout is unreasonable. The financial sector's dominance and deindustrialization have made the British economy highly dependent on the world economy and international markets, with severe unemployment in old industrial regions and stagnant urban development. Third, Britain's labor productivity is relatively low. In the OECD's 2019 ranking of GDP output per hour worked, France ranked 8th with $67.85, Germany 10th with $66.38, and Britain 13th with $58.61.
David Coates, in "Models of Capitalism," points out that neoliberal Britain primarily "relies on low wages, low skills, and a fragmented labor force to attract foreign direct investment into the assembly industries that play a major role in the economy, processing some medium-tech mass consumer goods within EU tariff barriers, and then selling them to the prosperous welfare capitalist countries of Europe." This has led to a service-sector-dominated and unevenly developed economic structure for Britain, where "apart from financial services having a certain degree of international competitiveness, the rest of the service sector is mainly concentrated in low-wage, slow-growing domestic market industries." The formation of this situation is directly related to the long-term government policies under the neoliberal model: relaxing financial regulation, implementing laissez-faire industrial policies, neglecting industrial capital investment, and one-sidedly emphasizing policies to absorb more employment.
Against the backdrop of Brexit, the British government is making strategic changes, strengthening the government's role in guiding industrial development, comprehensively planning the industrial structure, and improving the capital environment for industrial development. The government's economic functions are undergoing significant changes.
Correcting the Laissez-Faire Ethos of Neoliberalism
Constructing an industrial strategy is a significant correction to the laissez-faire ethos of neoliberalism. In 2015, the Cameron government published the white paper "Government Policy 2010-2015: Industrial Strategy," formally using the concept of "industrial strategy." The title used both "policy" and "strategy," indicating that at the conceptual level, the Cameron government still had reservations about the term "industrial strategy," fearing it carried the connotations of 1970s Keynesianism from before the neoliberal reforms. However, overall, the Cameron government had acknowledged the legitimacy of necessary government intervention in industrial development.
Vince Cable, the Coalition Cabinet's Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, emphasized that government industrial strategy should be a way to promote economic growth. While the market plays a fundamental role in driving growth, government intervention is also necessary in cases of "market failures." His successor, Sajid Javid, was more hesitant, expressing a preference for the term "industrial approach" rather than industrial strategy to refer to the government's guiding role in industrial policy. He stated that the government's best industrial approach should be "non-interventionist but highly engaged," involving extensive dialogue with all relevant parties during the engagement process, "by listening to voices from all business sectors, working with them to remove barriers to growth and productivity, and creating a prosperous environment."
Compared to the Cameron government, the Theresa May government had a clearer attitude towards the "return of industrial strategy," committing to building a "modern industrial strategy" for Britain and establishing corresponding executive departments within the government. In 2017, the May government published a white paper titled "Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain Fit for the Future," setting the overarching goal of making Britain "an economy with productivity and earning power, becoming the world's most innovative nation, the best place to start and grow a business, with upgraded infrastructure and prosperous communities" by 2030. This marked that the Conservative government had changed the traditional neoliberal stance of laissez-faire towards industrial development.
Building a More Comprehensive Industrial Layout
Under the influence of neoliberal reforms, successive British governments were eager to achieve economic growth and reduce unemployment within their terms, as this concerned the legitimacy of the reforms and the government's prospects. Since the service sector, financial industry, and real estate offered high returns, quick results, and could absorb a large amount of unemployment, they became the focus of government support, further fueling Britain's deindustrialization.
Against this backdrop, Britain's financial services industry grew rapidly. According to a report by the House of Commons, the financial services sector accounted for 5.5% of Britain's economic output in 1990, rising to 9.2% in 2009, becoming a "pillar industry" of the British economy. Although its share declined somewhat thereafter, it still accounted for 6.9% of Britain's economic output in 2018. Howard Davies, former Director of the London School of Economics, wrote on the Project Syndicate platform that becoming a financial center is not entirely a good thing; the social costs in other areas inevitably increase alongside financial gains. The most significant negative impact of the financial sector's dominance on the British economy is its high dependence on the world economy; global economic downturns directly affect the British economy. Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, the European debt crisis, and Brexit, the risks and challenges of this "all eggs in one basket" industrial structure are growing.
Increasing Capital Support for Industrial Development
The neoliberal reforms directly weakened capital support for industrial development in Britain. First, under the influence of privatization and reduced government intervention, state capital withdrew from the industrial sector on a large scale. Statistics show that in the 1979-1980 fiscal year, the British government's actual expenditure in the industrial sector was £2.982 billion, which had fallen to £1.672 billion by the 1989-1990 fiscal year, a decrease of 44%. Between 1979 and 1983, Britain lost approximately £23 billion in manufacturing investment, with companies relocating overseas.
Second, financial market liberalization enhanced the international competitiveness of Britain's financial sector, making it a key driver of the British economy and further weakening the attractiveness of capital to other British industries. Third, prioritizing inflation control as the primary goal of macroeconomic policy exacerbated Britain's high exchange and interest rates, severely inhibiting capital inflow into British industrial sectors.
British scholars Michael Kitson and Jonathan Michie argue that underinvestment is the main reason for Britain's rapid deindustrialization. In the neoliberal model, the government considered injecting investment into industry not its responsibility, believing capital should decide where to flow itself. This amounted to allowing manufacturing capital to flow out of Britain, while capital flowing into Britain mainly went to shopping centers and banking. Government industrial policy had been ineffective, and the public sector did not play its due role in industrial development. It was not until the Cameron government came to power in 2012 that Britain began to refuel industrial development.
Compared to Germany and France, Britain's labor productivity has consistently been relatively low, directly related to lower industrial investment in Britain. As long as the government makes corresponding adjustments to its functions, this situation can improve quickly. After the Cameron government implemented a more active industrial strategy in 2012, Britain's labor productivity growth rate soon surpassed that of Germany and France.
Is British Neoliberalism Coming to an End?
After the 1980s, Britain formed the most typical neoliberal model. After more than thirty years of continuous "correction" and "amendment" by "New Labour" and "New Conservatives," neoliberal values still hold a mainstream position in Britain. Through an interpretation of a series of new strategic documents from the British government after 2016, we can see that neoliberalism as an ideology and policy system is being thoroughly corrected in Britain. While this does not mean the British government has abandoned neoliberal values and ideology, the trend of reconfiguring the relationship between state and society, and government and market, is quite evident.
In terms of motivation, Britain's correction of the neoliberal model is not solely the result of the complete failure of neoliberal policies but rather a change made by the government in response to the trends of the times. In other words, while the neoliberal model has had a profound impact on the world, Britain itself is completing the process of "de-radicalizing" neoliberalism, implementing government strategies and policy systems closer to those of other countries.
The Triple Dilemma of British Neoliberalism
Margaret Thatcher's radical neoliberal reforms in the 1980s served the short-term function of "de-socialization," achieving the elimination of "stagflation," restoration of growth, and increased employment. For the succeeding Labour and Conservative governments, it was impossible to completely negate the achievements of the neoliberal reforms; they could only make partial "corrections" and "amendments." However, neoliberalism also brought multiple dilemmas to Britain's economic and social development, which must be effectively resolved to address Britain's problems in growth quality, industrial development, and social justice.
First, the ideological dilemma. Thatcher's reforms were highly ideological, with main policy connotations including privatization of state-owned enterprises, cutting public expenditure, and controlling the growth of social welfare. Due to the good reform performance, these policy tendencies formed a powerful "political correctness" in Britain. When Tony Blair's Labour government came to power in 1997, it had already discarded clauses in the party platform demanding the realization of public ownership, cautiously replacing references to "state ownership" with "social ownership." The Labour Party claimed to build a "responsible social market model" for Britain but did not actually challenge the neoliberal economic model, only emphasizing the state's responsibility in providing labor training and environmental protection as needed by the market.
In 2010, David Cameron led the Conservatives into a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. To shed the Conservative Party's "detestable" public image, Cameron proposed building a new ideology of "progressive conservatism" characterized by the "Big Society." However, "it is incorrect to view Cameron's 'One Nation' conservatism and Thatcher's conservatism as mutually opposed, although they are opposite in terms of welfare and the role and responsibility of the state. Essentially, they both view state expansion as dangerous and share the same ideological foundation." In other words, Thatcher's successors had already recognized the problems neoliberalism and its policy preferences brought to Britain but were trapped in a dilemma because they dared not or could not deny its political correctness.
Second, the reformer's dilemma. Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker once said that European politicians all know how to reform but do not know how to get re-elected after reforming. In Western electoral democracies, reformers must achieve clear performance within their term; otherwise, promoting reform equals "political suicide." The guiding principle for reform is not ideology but election strategy. Scholars have found that Thatcherism was not actually a coherent policy or ideology but belonged to the category of party governance strategy. The reason Heath and Callaghan failed was that their interventionist policies made it easy for voters to blame the government for negative factors in social life, leading to their defeat in the next election.
After Blair came to power, he also attempted to correct the "Thatcher revolution" in industrial and social policy. But for "New Labour," maintaining stable economic growth during the term was equally the primary task; the government still could not afford the economic, political, and social costs of solving structural problems. From 1997 to 2004, Britain's average annual GDP growth was 2.9%, reaching a relatively high post-war level, but little progress was made in solving structural problems. After 2010, facing huge external changes like the financial crisis and leaving the EU, the risks of promoting domestic reforms were greater, and the reformer's dilemma for the British government became more severe.
Third, the international competition dilemma. After Britain's neoliberal reforms in the 1980s, its ideology and policy preferences had a significant impact on the international community, especially Western countries. In Europe, Germany and France both implemented socio-economic reforms with neoliberal characteristics, significantly compressing public expenditure to improve international competitiveness. Thus, the competitive advantage Britain gained from pioneering reforms became increasingly smaller. Meanwhile, with the rise of newly industrialized countries, although Britain's economic scale grew at a decent pace, its position in the world declined. In 1980, Britain's GDP was $601.137 billion, ranking 5th in the world; in 2019, it was $2.83 trillion, ranking 6th. In 1980, Britain's GDP accounted for 5% of the world total; by 2019, it had fallen to 3.2%. Therefore, if the neoliberal model once brought "reform dividends" to Britain, under the pressure of international competition, it has fallen into the dilemma of shrinking dividends.
Where is British Neoliberalism Headed?
The British neoliberal model actually began adjusting from the moment Margaret Thatcher left office. As disputes over neoliberal ideology increased in British party politics, successive governments' corrections to the relationship between state and society, and government and market at the strategic level increased in magnitude, and the trend of Britain moving towards a "post-liberal" model became increasingly evident.
First, neoliberal ideology faces challenges. Since the Thatcher revolution in the 1980s, neoliberalism as an ideology had not faced a real challenge in mainstream British politics. After Labour lost power in 2010, Jeremy Corbyn became the new Labour leader, truly challenging neoliberalism ideologically. Corbyn is an "atypical" radical left-wing politician in Britain, calling himself a "fan of Marx" and a "Maoist." He completely negated the neoliberal reforms, claiming his governing goal was to achieve economic democratization, eliminate inequality, and social poverty. His policy proposals included renationalizing railways and postal services, creating national and regional investment banks, raising corporate and high-income taxes, abolishing university tuition fees, and eliminating zero-hour contracts.
The Labour Party led by Corbyn suffered consecutive defeats in the 2015, 2017, and 2019 general elections. He ultimately resigned after the 2019 defeat, succeeded by the centrist Keir Starmer as the new Labour leader. Corbyn's exit shows that the majority of British voters still cannot accept his "far-left" ideology. However, his rise indicates that neoliberal ideology has been thoroughly rejected among Britain's middle and lower classes. In fact, Britain already has a broad mass base for ideologically correcting neoliberalism.
Second, the relationship between state and society urgently needs adjustment. Compared to neoliberal values, adjusting the relationship between state and society has never been a "taboo topic" in Britain. Margaret Thatcher advocated the state's "withdrawal" from the economic and social spheres. During Blair's administration, public service investment and the National Health Service budget were significantly increased, which can be understood as the state's "return." After Cameron came to power in 2010, he proposed replacing "big government" with the "Big Society," "taking action to support and encourage social responsibility, volunteering, and philanthropy, and making it easier for people to come together to improve their communities and help each other," attempting to make relatively large cuts in public expenditure.
However, in building this idealized "Big Society," the state would play a role in supporting social construction, public sector cooperation, community building, youth education, and the "Big Society Bank." In other words, the core of Cameron's plan was for the state to play a social governance function, only opposing the state "monopolizing" society through large-scale public expenditure. This is fundamentally different from the neoliberal "laissez-faire" view of society. This indicates that exercising state social functions has become a mainstream view in Britain, drawing a clear line with the classical liberal concept of the state's social function as a "night watchman."
Third, the relationship between government and market is being reshaped. Neoliberalism is a form of "market fundamentalism," including privatization of state-owned enterprises, compression of public expenditure, and deregulation of prices, foreign trade, and foreign exchange, completely "unleashing" the market and opposing government intervention in the market economy. During the administrations of "New Labour" and "New Conservatives," the positioning of the state's economic function gradually shifted from "whether to intervene" to "how to intervene." For Britain, without effective government intervention, policy guidance, and financial support, it is impossible to improve the quality of economic growth, advance industrial development, and enhance social justice.
In an environment where neoliberal values still hold a mainstream position, most people in Britain still believe that "the government is not only 'power' but also a problem." In other words, if vigilance against government intervention is not maintained, the state's economic functions will inevitably expand rapidly. The new British government strategies discussed earlier are all about reshaping the government's responsibility towards the market and the manner of fulfilling that responsibility, which will bring significant changes to Britain's neoliberal model.
Theoretical Reflections on Correcting Neoliberalism
The process of Britain correcting the neoliberal model actually began when John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher. The government strategies published by the Conservative government after the 2016 Brexit referendum indicate that the intensity of this correction is continuously increasing. This process can be theoretically contemplated from the perspective of the state's socio-economic functions.
Classical liberalism ideologically rejects the state playing any role beyond that of a "night watchman," and neoliberalism accordingly promoted the state's "retreat." However, in the current era, weakening the state's socio-economic functions is bound to bring many problems to economic growth and social development. Therefore, analyzing the latest developments in Britain's correction of the neoliberal model helps us understand the profound changes and development direction of contemporary capitalist states.
The State's Socio-Economic Functions are an Objective Need Beyond Ideology
In fact, even during the most radical period of Thatcher's reforms, the British state's "withdrawal" from the economic and social spheres was only a myth. It merely replaced the direct, close-range government intervention of the post-war period with indirect, long-distance macroeconomic control, substituted the fine-tuning of aggregate demand under Keynesianism with controlling the money supply, replaced the goal of full employment with training programs for the unemployed, substituted directive planning for state-owned enterprises with regulation of monopolistic public enterprises, and replaced indiscriminate universal support with selective subsidies for industry.
In other words, state intervention still existed during the Thatcher era, only adjusted from "strong intervention" to "weak intervention." But even so, the weakening of the state's socio-economic functions brought problems to Britain in terms of growth quality, industrial structure, and social justice. Jürgen Habermas argued that "late capitalism" tends towards "the dominance of capital-intensive industries in the monopoly and public sectors, and labor-intensive industries in the competitive sector: the organic composition of capital in the former is higher than in the latter."
After the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, Britain encountered problems in all areas requiring the strengthening of the state's socio-economic functions. In recent years, these have become matters concerning the "legitimacy" of the British government, and "the disintegration of the original ideology and the loss of the original 'legitimacy' are actually one and the same." In recent years, the commonality of the British government's new strategies has been to solve the aforementioned problems by strengthening the government's socio-economic functions and enhancing governance legitimacy. This, in turn, indicates that neoliberal ideology already faces severe challenges in Britain.
Western Political Systems Affect the State's Performance of Socio-Economic Functions
Under Western political systems, there is a contradiction between the state's economic and social functions. Friedrich Engels long ago discovered that the capitalist state's "government, on the one hand, is compelled to make all sorts of promises to the workers, but, on the other hand, cannot fulfill a single one of them because it lacks the courage to take revolutionary measures against the capitalists, such as implementing high progressive taxes, inheritance taxes, confiscating the property of all emigrants, prohibiting cash exports, establishing a national bank, etc., thereby obtaining the funds necessary to fulfill its promises."
This contradiction means capitalism always faces the conflict between economy and society, setting fundamental limits to its development. In fact, post-war capitalist states have always been in "a self-contradictory dilemma: the state must implement policies to promote economic growth, which are motivated by economic profit; and it must implement welfare policies to compensate for the costs of capitalist economic growth, which are required to disregard economic profit and invest in public welfare. This conflict inevitably leads to a crisis of legitimacy for the late capitalist state."
Meanwhile, under Western political systems, there is also a contradiction between government terms and reform performance. Scholars have found that in Western political systems, governments must consider the "chain effect" of policy input and output when making decisions. "Ideally, they seek to design projects with short causal chains for benefits and long, complex causal chains for costs. For example, time lags greatly increase the length and complexity of causal chains, so decision-makers support policy designs that focus on direct benefits but delay or obscure costs."
This is because, in areas requiring long decision chains for policy and capital investment, political consensus and policy stability are necessary. Western electoral democracies struggle to ensure such consensus and stability, thereby limiting the motivation of Western governments to solve long-term, structural problems.
Universal Characteristics of Contemporary Capitalism
From classical liberalism to neoliberalism, the attitude towards the state playing a role in the economic and social spheres has been negative in terms of values. However, "even under the liberal capitalist system, the market did not independently assume the function of social integration. Only after the state can meet the general prerequisites for maintaining capitalist production do class relations manifest as the non-political relationship between wage labor and capital."
Upon entering "late capitalism," the political-economic duality of the state characteristic of the "liberal capitalist" era has disappeared. The functions of the state now include both filling the gaps left by the market and intervening in the accumulation process to compensate for its politically possible consequences. The state ensures systemic stability by strengthening its intervention function and, by promoting the interdependence between scientific research and technology, makes science and technology the primary productive force.
The problems that emerged in Britain's economic and social development under the neoliberal model stem precisely from the weakening of these socio-economic functions of the state, which is also the driving force behind its new government strategies to strengthen state functions. However, Habermas mistakenly believed that "the important conditions of political economy, which Marx correctly proposed based on liberal capitalist society, disappear" in explaining the role of the late capitalist state.
Actually, Engels long ago pointed out that for the capitalist state, "the transfer of the productive forces to state ownership is not the solution to the conflict, but it contains within it the formal means, the key to the solution." Interpreting the new changes at the strategic government level in Britain, the "bastion of neoliberalism," we can find that although the British government always emphasizes that the state does not replace society and the government does not regulate the market, in terms of the state playing the role of "supporter" of society and the market, it has actually diverged considerably from the original neoliberal ideology.
Looking to the future, even in Britain, the classical liberal myth of the state only playing a "night watchman" role faces severe challenges. Both society and the market are inseparable from the state-led governance system, and this is precisely the basic characteristic of contemporary capitalism.
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