Return of the State

Graeme Garrard is a reader in politics at Cardiff University. He is the author of Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenments, and coauthor of How to Think Politically.

“Graeme Garrard…assembles the moral, economic and political reasons why the world of the privatised and outsourced state is over…The title of this book comes as a timely reminder that The Return of the State is here already.”—Polly Toynbee, The Guardian“A masterpiece of analysis—systematically dismantling our current meaningless antiquated political vocabulary, and the fantasy that charities and civil society will bring us salvation. Garrard’s advocacy for the public interest state is convincing and compelling. What else might work for (or appeal to) the next generation?”—Danny Dorling, author of Slowdown“As a global pandemic continues to expose the deep problems with the modern state’s subordination to market forces, Graeme Garrard’s book offers us both an engaging history of how the social democratic welfare state came about and a timely case for the necessity of restraining private power.”—Luke Savage, Jacobin magazine