You can see how a leftist critique of capitalism, when it can only see the liberal tendencies in capitalism, aligns itself currently with social conservatism. I think that's a very frightening tendency in the left right now.

Political scientist Melinda Cooper explains how decades of neoliberalism transformed the politics of the American family - from the realignment of (shrinking) welfare spending along familial lines, to a politically convenient yet contradictory relationship with social conservatism - and calls for the left to move beyond revolutionary spectacle and towards re-establishing points of institutional intervention, for the welfare of all citizens.

Melinda is author of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the new Social Conservatism from Zone Books.