KEVIN Rudd has produced a philosophical manifesto in response to the global financial crisis that puts an intellectual framework around his "social-democrat", centrist position.
But for all the high and mighty sounding rhetoric its raw politics are designed to create a real political choice for voters and to damn and jam the Coalition.
For almost a decade there has been little to separate the main political camps but for John Howard's personality and Peter Costello's economic management. Even the social issues of immigration and asylum seekers ended with virtually identical Labor and Liberal policies, although Howard had captured the politics and split Labor internally.
Now it's Rudd's chance to fashion his own style of economic management arising from the fear and dislocation of the global financial crisis and leave the Liberals split.
While Rudd's treatise on neo-liberal economics has some glaring gaps and offers no concrete solutions, he has provided a coherent argument for increased government intervention that contrasts with the Liberals' free-market philosophy.
Rudd has created an economic battleground with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama on his side and John Howard, Alan Greenspan and Malcolm Turnbull on the other.
The Prime Minister knows that calls now for "the market to decide" are discredited and will turn voters away from those supporting a system that has so comprehensively and demonstrably failed, for want of proper regulation and fairness.
It's not quite as simple as Rudd suggests - that everything's come tumbling down because of extreme capitalism and greed - but it's a political line that will be warmly embraced.
If Rudd can successfully quote French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying the laissez-faire economy is finished, there will be those in the Coalition who agree and who will doubt their current principles.
For Turnbull, whose background as a merchant banker has helped his credibility on the mechanics of the financial markets, there will be a personal challenge to respond to Rudd's caring government intervention.
Rudd may have spent his Christmas break working on a philosophical treatise but its bottom line is a political thrust at the Coalition.