Introduction: a new origins story of free market thought -- The dream of Cicero -- The divine economy -- God in the Medieval market mechanism -- Florentine wealth and the Machiavellian marketplace -- England's free trade by means of the state -- Freedom and wealth in the Dutch Republic -- Jean-Baptiste Colbert and teh state-made market -- The nightmares of the Sun King and the dream of free markets -- The movement of the planets and the new world of English free trade -- England versus France: trade war, debt, and the dream of paradise found -- The French cult of nature and the invention of enlightenment economics -- Free markets versus nature -- Adam Smith and the benevolent free-trade society -- Free market empire -- The end of virtue: liberalism and libertarianism -- Conclusion: authoritarian capitalism, democracy, and free market thought.
Summary:
After two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.
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