Barack Obama faces the dilemma that has confronted all politicians of the centre left since the demise of socialism: to articulate a new progressive account of the relationship between the state and the market. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton proclaimed a “third way”, but this degenerated into platitude and vacuity. Can President Obama do better?

The market economy remains a hard sell and recent events have brought out the Jeremiahs to proclaim the death of capitalism. But the modern critique of capitalism is incoherent, summed up by the May day protesters whose banner read: “Capitalism should be replaced by something nicer”. It is much clearer what anti-globalisation protesters are against than what they are for. For many people, environmentalism has taken the place of socialism as a focus of anti-market sentiment. But environmentalism offers no economic theory, only a visceral dislike of any economic calculus. The two principal strands of modern leftist economic thought are social democracy and redistributive market liberalism. Robert Reich, President Clinton’s labour secretary, expounded the social democratic philosophy in office and in his recent book Supercapitalism.