‘Freedom’, ‘choice’, and zombie capitalism
The seventies are remembered as a time of crisis, one that it usually blamed on the unions but had deeper roots. The long post-war consumer boom had run into the oil shock, and this meant (in stagnant and inflationary economies that weren’t used to either) that arguments about distribution were back on the table. In the UK, the 70s were also the most equal decade we have known. But it’s also easy to forget the tone of moral panic that this induced. Even coherent commentators such as Patrick Hutber were shovelling out books with titles like The Decline and Fall of the Middle Class, while the less coherent, such as the ex-soldiers General Walter Walker and David Stirling were threatening armed insurrection.