Modern mainstream economics has assumed that the role of the state is limited to activities in which free markets fail—that is, cannot perform the task of equilibrating supply and demand at a price that is efficient. To the author, a Brazilian economist, this is a dangerous oversimplification of the uses and purposes of the state, and it has been the basis of a neoliberal assault on government. He persuasively rights the course. The state and the market are complementary, neither one greater than the other.