A Review of the The Common Good Economy: A New Compass by Mariana Mazzucato (Allen Lane, 2026, pp.352)
Mariana Mazzucato has made a career out of telling governments what they already want to hear – that they are not merely the fixers of last resort but the architects of prosperity itself. With The Common Good Economy, her latest offering from Allen Lane, the UCL economist and policy entrepreneur has taken this flattering message to its logical conclusion.
If her previous books, the Entrepreneurial State (2013) and Mission Economy (2021), argued that the state deserves more credit for innovation and more latitude in directing investment, The Common Good Economy goes further. It argues that the very purpose of economic life must be reoriented around a collective moral vision, curated and administered by enlightened institutions operating according to principles of “directionality”, “co-creation”, “participation” and “reciprocity”. The book is long, earnest, and rich with the vocabulary of progressive policy circles. It is also, at its philosophical core, a work of considerable intellectual presumption.
The book’s central conceit – stated with disarming confidence on page 3 – is that modern economics has been trapped in a narrow, individualistic framework ever since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776 and that this framework “lacks a coherent theory of the common good”. This framing, Mazzucato asserts, is not just incomplete but morally deficient – a catastrophic narrowing that has robbed economic governance of purpose, direction and solidarity.
The implication, barely concealed throughout, is that the classical
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Why would you give this person a minute of your time on the daily sceptic. Please start writing about successful people here in the Uk. I am certain there are some. Thanks.
Hear, hear.
collectively determined outcomes
Isn’t there a word for a system like this? On the tip of my tongue….maybe begins with a ‘C’….tried in many countries without success.
And if you happen to live in a part of the world governed as a theocracy, an anarchy, a feudal state, or even as an intentional community, will the “common good compass” be similar or be based on the five principles? Or are we just reading a wordy version of ‘my way would be best’?
It’s just yet another reheated version of The Republic by Plato – “people like me should be in charge, because we are WISE2.
Managed Capitalism – that is what the USSR had, aka Communism.
Worked well?
Sure. Stalin did really well from it.
A frivolous remark for lovers of Italian vernacular:
Mariana Mazzucato, do-gooder ‘sto cazzo.
Great critique.
“In reading The Common Good Economy, one is struck by a persistent tension that the author never quite resolves. The book wants to be both a work of philosophical ambition – drawing on Aristotle’s polis, Cicero’s salus populi, Aquinas’s Christian conception of human flourishing, ‘indigenous knowledge’ traditions and the “wisdom of biological ecosystems” – and a practical policy manual for reorganising finance…”
I have strong feeling that this book’s intellectual failings are in fact no problem at all – for the book’s intended purpose. The book doesn’t actually need to Find The Solution which evaded all the big-name economic thinkers it engages with (or, often, doesn’t).
It’s just a new, trendy framework, within which government can carry on doing the same old thing. It’s about a new way of talking about doing, not about doing things differently. Same content, different font. Same product, better marketing.
Same product – communism.
We already have a communist government controlled market that dictates what must be made, how much of it, what can be bought, and through endless pricing mechanism how often it can be used.
We havent had a free market for as long as I can remember.
Sounds like she plagiarised Atlas Shrugged but with a different ending – I know which version I believe, it doesn’t end well imho.
Who is she and why should I bother?
1) Who – see my comment here.
2) Should you bother – no. See 1) for why.
Here lies the issue that almost nobody understands: The only reason cronyism is able to exist is because in the first place there is a state, exerting a monopoly of force, that can be corrupted.
Whatever corruption emerges in a free market system isn’t the failure of the free market system as is always claimed. It is the corruption of the free market system by a socialistic state. And the free market gets the blame for the failure every time when it’s the other way around.
The bigger the state, the bigger the corruption. Every single time.
The entire socialist edifice is built of constant gaslighting and accusations of the moral deficiency of those who don’t agree with it.
“The only reason cronyism is able to exist is because in the first place there is a state, exerting a monopoly of force, that can be corrupted.”
Agree, but I’ll be a bit nit-picky. That’s one way in which cronyism develops – and a very obvious one nowadays.
The other way is by the formation of cartels, independent of the state. Nowadays it’s a bit theoretical, because the State nowadays has its fingers in everything. But it was a big thing in the past.
I suppose you could argue that cartel-formation is also the fault of the state, but in this case for not intervening and restoring a state of real competition, when it should. If you believe (as I do) that the prevention of cartels is one thing a state is necessary for. Smith would probably agree, given that passage about “if people in the same trade gather together, you can be sure they’re plotting against the common good” (rough paraphrase).
Didja know the new head of the Competition and Markets Authority is an ex-Amazon guy?
5 Principles… ‘reward sharing’ why? If you got an apple from the teacher for the best homework, why should you share it with the kid who didn’t bother doing theirs? That’s not a ‘reward’, it’s everyone gets a prize – especially yours. It’s rewarding dependence, fecklessness, and exploitation – the very sin socialism so hates, and which is what is eating our benefits system from the inside out.
Imagine if students were “taxed” 30% of their marks and those confiscated marks were given to the lower performing students. And imagine if the top students had 50% of their marks taken away instead of 30%.
It’s a goddam miracle productive people carry on.
If you want a logical and stable society, ban women from voting and get all women out of important jobs. This woman is not an economist with any logical brain. Women are the biggest danger ro our society.
If you want to know what a feminised society looks like, look around you. Everything that is wrong is ultimately caused by the feminisation of our thoughts and deeds.
MODERATOR HERE
An interesting Comment..
I (female) have corrected your spelling errors
Incoming… Mogwai ….
But if not me, who?🤷♀️ When have you ever witnessed another woman, or even another man, posting anything in response to the woman-haters? So what does that tell you?
Silence is compliance, and I’ve been reading the room on this site, the group dynamics and the blatant double standards on display, for a very long time.
Slagging women off with impunity=🙂
Slightly criticising men=☠
I’ve posted a reply. I was out and about earlier. Silence may sometimes be compliance but I don’t think you can assume that.
I can certainly assume that because look at the amount of women who ever speak up on this subject when it inevitably arises due to the resident women-haters who get predictably triggered on the regular. It’s only ever me, myself and I, whether you care to admit it or not. Not once has a female commenter chimed in with her viewpoint or had my back.
Their perpetual silence speaks volumes and tells me all I need to know.😒
Just as well I’m perfectly capable of fighting my own battles, isn’t it?🙄
Very few people of either sex seem to post here. Shame. I would love to know how many women are subscribed. My impression is it many but I may be wrong.
Personally, I am very convinced many people self-censor on here, the majority of them being women. You know how I’m so confident? ( Bearing in mind we don’t know the sex of every single poster. ) There’s the example I’ve stated above: literally crickets when it comes to any woman other than myself acknowledging and challenging the ever-present misogyny that rears its ugly head by the usual suspects, but what you’ll find is that women seem to only post comments when they can be assured that they’ll be received positively by the majority ( or ‘hive mind’ that inhabits the echo chamber, as I call it ) and are confident they’re firmly on the same page as everyone else.
There’s no deviation from the script, no sign of dissent and certainly no challenging of any other poster by bringing a counter-argument to the table. I think it’s all about not wanting to ruffle feathers and to keep on the right side of the Boys’ Club, with whom they seek approval via their comments. In fact, most people just comment in order to get their own views affirmed and validated by others. Hence why I go down like a day old… Read more »
And once you’ve acquired your Utopia of Sharia Law-type conditions, whereby females are all relegated to exist as a subjugated underclass, because weak men clearly feel threatened by us, I’m confident life will improve with more excellent male movers and shakers such as: Ed Millipants, Keir Starmer, Zack Polanksi, David Lammy, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair etc types.
Because, as I’m sure your posse of fellow women-haters will agree ( should they ever decide to grow a pair and unlurk from the shadows ), all that counts is that you own a penis and you are superior and beyond reproach. Oh, and be white…nearly forgot that.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the obvious correlation between the resident misanthropes, such is your consistent display of contempt for other human beings.
Of course exceptional people are exceptional so they stand out from the rest like Elizabeth I and Margaret Thatcher. The mediocre in contrast are always at their best.
On the other hand, some are exceptional for their mediocrity. In my personal opinion I include Ursula von der Leyen and Theresa May for balance.
Boudica is considered a symbol of resistance and a national heroine, as she led a significant uprising against the Roman Empire, although ultimately her revolt was unsuccessful. Her leadership and bravery have made her a legendary figure in British history.
I am sure there are those in dresses who will claim she was trans but I have never seen any historical document stating her pronouns. Strange thing that.
I think your suggestion to ban women from voting is both impractical and immoral. It amounts to “only people with ideas I approve of should vote”. I mean you can advocate for some other way of organising society that is not democracy, but if you want voting then I think you need to let everyone vote, or come up with some less arbitrary criteria that qualifies you to vote.
It’s certainly true in my view that the emergence of certain ways of looking at and organising the world that reflect qualities that are usually considered more typically feminine have emerged since women got the vote, but lots of other things have also changed since then. It’s possible that women not having the vote may have delayed such tendencies, but I am not sure that is sustainable or desirable. Ultimately I think we just need to persuade others of our case, regardless of sex, and stop putting people into categories. My wife and daughters see the world much as I do, and probably in many respects much as you do. I feel they are allies, not enemies.
Do you see why I keep mentioning the so-called Horseshoe theory with regards to similarities in behaviour between Left and Right? So we have men on this site who advocate actual authoritarianism, just like the Lefties with their anti-free speech/pro-censorship, pro-woke stance, only a different type in that they’d go so far as to strip women of our fundamental civil liberties because they view us as inferior and unworthy. Important to note: this insulting and profoundly disrespectful attitude also meets the definition of fascism. So that’s nice to know, isn’t it? That so many men would wish to see us subordinated, as they view us as that much of a threat. It would appear such men don’t belong in a liberal democracy and would be happier taking their deep-seated resentment of women and moving to a dictatorship.
It’s why I can’t align myself with the Right. I’m too liberal for them but too anti-woke for the Left. Where to put myself?😁
Anyway, I do hope none of these misogynists are fathers of daughters, because that is a troubling thought. Imagine being a girl brought up by a man who holds such contempt for her sex that he would place severe… Read more »
I think there’s a divide on the “right” between those with more libertarian tendencies who may themselves be quite conservative but don’t feel they want to impose that on others, and those who would be happy to see socially conservative rules imposed on society generally.
I can’t speak for Grim Ace and I don’t know all of his views, but while his unease about “feminisation” may be shared by many (men and women) I doubt his suggested remedies would be shared by more than a small minority.
In so far as the “right” means freedom of speech, respect for private property, rule of law, liberty under the law, individualism over collectivism, capitalism over socialism, nation states over globalism, small government not big government, then I am on the “right”. But I don’t think we should worry about these labels. I just try to think about what seems right, and try to understand other people’s arguments on these subjects.
You would have far more effect taking the piss out of men than doing a Rev’d Starmer from the pulpit.
Humour please.
“they’d go so far as to strip women of our fundamental civil liberties because they view us as inferior and unworthy”.
Sorry but your ‘fundamental civil liberties’ are so fundamental they have existed for less than 100 years and for the ordinary working man those same liberties are so fundamental they have only existed for 108 years.
Now that to me is starting to look very close to equality between the sexes for such ‘fundamental liberty’.
Billions of people around this world don’t have any conception of your idea of ‘fundamental liberty’. It does not exist for them. And that is not because of their sex.
Get real. Life is a struggle and for some it is a greater struggle than for others.
Women have been banned from voting for centuries all around the world.
Look what happened after the vote was given first to the working man in 1918 in the UK and then to women a decade later in 1928.
Prior to that C19 brought the industrial revolution and the long reign of Queen Victoria.
PS. Democracy is pretty much a new thing historically which not even the Greeks extended to all so they did not really invent it. The idea democracy has existed for thousands of years is just bunk.
You could argue lots of things happened during that period and afterwards, and as you yourself point out, the vote was extended to many more men too.
If you are going to call it democracy then I think you need to come up with some more rational criteria for determining who can vote, otherwise it’s some other system. That’s fine, but that didn’t seem to be the point Grim Ace was making.
Giving people the ability to vote may not be the greatest system there is.
The utter mess Western democracies find themselves in today is not the best advertisement for democracy. In the EU governments can’t make sensible decisions they are so fragmented.
I take exception to people describing voting as a ‘fundamental civil liberty’.
Bearing in mind voting has not been around that long as I demonstrated in a prior post, there is nothing fundamental about it.
If it is so ‘fundamental’ that should mean all the different societies and civilisations which over tens of thousands of years existed from period to period should not have existed because they lacked this ‘fundament’ and so had no foundation for their existence.
In Eastern Europe during the occupation by the Soviet Bloc there was a joke that they lived in a free society – ‘we are free to do what we are allowed to do’.
But that also applies in the UK.
Well yes indeed it may not be the greatest – it certainly has many flaws, especially in its current form. I don’t know what the solution is, but I am pretty sure the first line of attack shouldn’t be to take away the vote from women – apart from anything else, it’s not likely to succeed and it’s going to create “our side” more enemies than friends.
Betty W’ comments here are not so encouraging:
Perhaps we should adopt the Muslim system and get the women postal votes which the men fill in and return for them?
And more from Betty W here:
Maybe she and Mogwai should tag team on DS?
Oops, I missed a good one here:
Yes females probably skew a bit left, but probably so do lots of other groups one could make up based on some arbitrary characteristic, and excluding them all is just going to piss off a lot of allies. Just seems like a wrong path to me.
You’d likely get a mass exodus of women, too, and the birth rate would tank even more. Especially due to the justifiable resentment women would feel towards men as a consequence, then any existing division would grow wider still. I sure as hell wouldn’t tolerate living in a society where I’m othered and relegated to a second class citizen based purely on what my sex chromosomes are doing. Fuck that. There’s no justifiable reason for stripping voting rights from half the populace, especially if they’ve worked and paid into the system. It’s nothing more than a different flavour of authoritarianism and the usual tripe from the misogynists’ playbook: always blame women for the failures and bad behaviour of men.
Same goes for banning women from jobs. If only DEI could be scrapped and meritocracy reinstated there’d be no reason to ban anyone. Best candidate for the job regardless of characteristics.
So, increase the voting age by all means, but other than that it’s all a moot point anyway as it’ll remain a wet dream for society’s misogynists who are always looking for a scapegoat to blame because acknowledging men are ever at fault is just too jarring for their fragile… Read more »
Let’s not mention all the downtrodded decent men who are victims of widespread misandry.
That would not do now, would it.
Deflection? Is that all you’ve got? I believe the original comment from Grim Face, with support from the usual posse of resident women-haters, was a misogynist rant about stripping women of their rights and denying us access to jobs. Let’s stay on topic, shall we? Or is that too difficult a task for a man such as yourself? Yeah, bit of a giveaway, the fact you’re unable to even maintain the pretence of impartiality…”Birds of a feather…”😏
Moggers, you really must stop taking the bait.
Hook, line and sinker.
Man up.
Or in your own words, grow a pair.
Projection. The last refuge of a man who knows he’s beat and is all out of relevant comebacks….
I rest my case.
Adios 👋🏾
Oh dear. We men are such fickle shallow creatures.
Looks like we are both declaring victory, LOL.
MODERATOR: Please stop correcting the spelling errors of the great unwashed.
Moderation is about moderating and not about grammar and spelling.
And you also mislead the rest of us when you correct spelling errors because you are signalling that people of limited abilities are able to engage in sound dialogue.
If they can’t spell or be bothered to check what they write and correct it that is their problem and not yours.
Stop interfering. The fact you now disclose you are a woman only serves to reinforce what some people consider to be stereotypical female behaviour – interfering. So you have just reinforced Grim Ace’s views.
Well done.
I won’t dignify this comment with a response.
Interesting. Another ‘worthy’ who thinks the solution to all our woes is ‘more government’.
No, I have not already voted for this comment. Uptick please.
And, of course, in context ‘more government’ means more taxpayer funded employment for Mazucatto and those who think like her.
Nothing better than a statist globalist technocrat shill masquerading as an intellectual.
Ridiculous little woman.
Not a book to be tossed away lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
H/tip D. Parker.
In reality this is dogma politics and ideology dressed up as economic theory. We have had so much of this over the past 50 years from economists who make their names promoting themselves and their theories whilst not in fact seeming to know how economies work.
“Mariana Mazzucato is an Italian-American economist and professor known for her work in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she also founded the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She has held various high-level policy roles and has published extensively on innovation economics, value theory, and the role of the public sector in driving innovation.”
Translated that means an academic in an ivory tower who doesn’t have to be successful in the real world – but only in the conceptual world of academic intellectuals.
God save us from the intellectuals, more dogmas, ideologies and unproven unprovable theories.
PS. Success in self-promotion in the academic world is not a marker of a successful economist in the real world but only in the unreality of the microcosm of the world of universities which are notorious in offering crap degree courses of naff-all use to a modern economy.
It is time we stopped letting academics dictate what undergraduates are taught.