There’s a good piece by Kevin Rudd in The Monthly from 2006 titled Howard’s Brutopia: The battle of ideas in Australian politics wherein he engages with, among other things, the thought of neo-liberal economist Friedrich Hayek. Here’s a snippert or two:

… it is critical that social democrats recognise that the culture war is not just a diversion. It is a fraud. There are no more corrosive agents at work today, on the so-called conservative institutions of family, community, church and country, than the unforgiving forces of neo-liberalism, materialism and consumerism, which lay waste to anything in their path …

Working within a comprehensive framework of self-regarding and other-regarding values gives social democrats a rich policy terrain in which to define a role for the state. This includes the security of the people; macro-economic stability; the identification of market failure in critical areas such as infrastructure; the identification of key public goods, including education, health, the environment and the social safety net; the fostering of new forms of social capital; and the protection of the family as the core incubator of human and social capital. These state functions do not interfere with the market; they support the market. But they have their origins in the view that the market is designed for human beings, not vice versa, and this remains the fundamental premise that separates social democrats from neo-liberals.

[The mention of Hayek recalled for me an interesting article by John Hibbs titled ‘Forsyth, Hayek and the Remoralisation of Society: Church, Life and Economics’, which appeared in Libertarian Alliance: Religious Notes 5 (1992): 1–4. If anyone would like a copy just email me].

One might then turn to consider this recent critique.