The current problem of left political movements, whatever that benighted term might encompass nowadays, is that they have fallen into the trap where discussions of the crisis end up being hopelessly backward-looking: perhaps preaching “restoration” of proper “regulation,” reenergizing mid-twentieth-century configurations of state power, or returning to a more “fair and equal” income distribution, or redeeming and making debtors whole through debt forgiveness, refurbishing an economy less beholden to and less composed of financialized corporate entities, resembling that which reigned during the immediate postwar period. Some have waxed openly nostalgic about the New Deal; others idealize the 1960s. Yet this ignores a basic truism learned by conservatives long ago: “To preserve the regime, the conservative must reconstruct the regime.” The superior insight of the neoliberals, in particular, is that you can never go home again, largely because they have sought to build intentional irreversibilities into their previous political interventions.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 903