I know, someone already trademarked that question, but there seems to be some confusion worth discussing.

Pursuing pro-market reforms does not imply facing a trade-off between efficiency and social justice. In this sense, pro-market policies are “left wing”, if that means reducing the economic privileges enjoyed by “insiders”.

...If the European left wants to be able to say honestly that it fights for the neediest members of our society, it must adopt as its battle cry the pursuit of competition, reforms and a system based on meritocracy.

My only complaint is that they write as if this is new. In fact, liberalism, meaning classical liberalism, has never been conservative. It began as a movement of the left against feudalistic, conservative insiders and it remains so today.

Precisely. But, things have drifted quite a lot from that good beginning as some of the good liberals became "the insiders" - big business interests that function in ways similar to the old gentry. They talk pro-market but seek to capture rents via government policies.

Still, it isn't helpful to oppose markets, as today's pseudo-liberals usually do, since it doesn't much matter if the insiders are bureaucrats or corporatists. Neither care for social justice or the neediest among us. It's two paths to economic privileges.

Said another way . . .

Everyone worth listening to wants justice. At this late date, the attempt to equate markets with a callous indifference to justice can be little more than a dishonest attempt to forestall a clear-eyed examination of the real issue: what configuration of institutions most reliably creates opportunity and prosperity for all. If it is impossible to say "one with freer markets" without being slandered as a capitalist stooge, then it may be impossible to realize more truly just societies.

The above was all prompted by this brief essay which also notes that . . .

If there is no trade-off then between social justice and efficiency in today’s Europe, why are reforms so slow in coming to nations like Italy and France? Why is the typical “compassionate” European voter confused about the pro-poor features of pro-market reforms? The answer is the usual one in political economics – the “insiders” block reforms, although the political mechanisms vary from country to country. Alas, they can’t simply say no to reforms just because they would hurt their interests. They need the rhetoric of defending the weak and poor.

As with so many, many issues today the rhetoric of virtue - peace, defending the weak, even defending the planet - is just rhetoric masking the true objective of preserving the status, power and economic privileges of insiders - the well connected modern version of the old feudal elites. It is my hope that some of their deluded but good hearted supporters will twig to this, and resume a more truly liberal path for all the reasons they currently follow an illiberal path.