José María Ridao

If the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the failure of the communist utopia, the financial crisis that erupted in the West in 2007 impoverished millions of citizens while certifying the collapse of the conservative revolution spearheaded years earlier by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan—a 'revolution' that dismantled the welfare state, left markets without state control, and weakened the work of international institutions, which became increasingly ineffective in the face of conflicts such as those that bloodied the Balkans, the former Soviet republics, or, more recently, the countries swept up in the so-called Arab Spring. José María Ridao denounces the myths of political messianism to which we have been subjected since the turn of the millennium and the attacks on the Twin Towers. In opposition to supposed economic ideals like extreme austerity, fiscal balance, and market deregulation—all carrying devastating consequences—the author claims an intellectual stance that does not hide behind false theoretical speculations to close its eyes to the suffering and misery of human beings dragged along by the whirlwinds of history.