Free Market

The History of an Idea

By: Jacob Soll

Narrated by: Craig Van Ness

From a MacArthur “Genius,” an intellectual history of the free market, from ancient Rome to the twenty-first century

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.

“If, as Keynes asserted, ideas are in the end, what is most important, intellectual history captures the driving forces behind social change. There is much to be learned relevant to current policy debates from Jacob Soll’s engaging history of the free market idea. Whether you think you love or hate free markets, you will learn much from this important book.”—Lawrence H. Summers

“In this essential book, Jacob Soll gives us a lucid, frequently surprising, and altogether enthralling account of the history of free market thought. Deeply learned and engagingly written, the book has important implications for how we should think about free markets today. In every sense, it is a revelation.”—David A. Bell, Princeton University

“Jacob Soll's fascinating and pathbreaking study is a historical tour de force and a brilliant exploration of the major economic ideas that have shaped our world.”—Gordon Brown, former prime minister, United Kingdom

“Among the defining values of Western societies, free expression and human rights stand tall. What about the free market? How certain are we about its origins and meaning? As only a master historian can, Jacob Soll takes us through the origins, alternatives, and ambiguities. Defenders as well as detractors must consult this defining history.”—Margaret C. Jacob, distinguished research professor, UCLA

“In an awe-inspiring and enthralling tour from the ancient to the contemporary world, Jacob Soll dissolves the dichotomy of market and government, showing that it was campaigns for affluence led by the state in the century and a half before the French Revolution that birthed the dream of liberating economic affairs from interference. Soll is one of our master historians, and his newest book makes it impossible to think about the wealth of nations—or our political future—in the same way again.”—Samuel Moyn, Yale University

©2022 Jacob Soll (P)2022 Spotify Audiobooks

I recommend this book as part of a trilogy

It's interesting that I read this book when I did. I was recommended this book by a friend of mine.

Meanwhile, I just finished a book that was just like this one, except the complete opposite in perspective in basically every way. This book goes very far back into history and features a lot of research of many different thinkers in the last 2,000 years, and has maybe an 80% similarity in the cast of characters to this other book, which casts them in the opposite light.

So for example, in this book, "Free Market" by Jacob Soll, one finds that Colbert is praised for his significant intervention in France's economy, and that Alexander Hamilton's visions of city-favoritism, (fractional-reserve) banking, paper money, and inflation are seen in a favorable light, and one gets the impression that Soll believes that people who believe in free markets are anarchists (which is a little annoying, because it is almost never true), so Soll is constantly commenting on every time in history when the government ever did its country a useful service, as if that is evidence against free markets, as if free markets and the existence of governments are incompatible.

Meanwhile, this other book is like the reverse of everything I just mentioned, covering so many of the same people, and having the complete opposite perspective of the same research and information-- this other book happens to be "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought" by Murray Rothbard, a literal anarchist and Austrian economist. So in Rothbard's book, one finds that Colbert is criticized for his relentless intervention with France's economy, that Thomas Jefferson's visions of laissez-faire, anti-(fractional reserve)-banking, hard money, and noninflation are seen in a favorable light, and one is constant reminded that anarchy is Rothbard's desired form of "government" (no government) because in anarchy, markets are free. (Yet Rothbard is very interested in legal matters, such as his insistence that natural law should be upheld through 100% cash reserve banking laws for deposits. Apparently anarchists have strong opinions on how the legal system should work in a country without a government.)

Anyway. Rothbard is the exact strawman-charicature that Soll seems to be writing to persuade, and yet from what I can tell, Soll has never heard of him, otherwise Rothbard would probably have made it into Soll's discussion of Menger, Mises, Hayek, and the Austrian School in the final chapter. This is no fault of Soll's, of course-- it's impossible to hear of everyone-- but I find the irony of this coincidence to be rich, that Soll hasn't heard of a man, Murray Rothbard, who wrote the exact same yet exact opposite book as him.

Both of these books I am mentioning (praising) are clearly slanted books, as a reader of either of them will easily observe, but fortunately, reading them both cancels the slanting-effect while still revealing insightful history. The people and the events in both books match to a tee, so neither is making up stuff, so that's good. The only similarity in perspective is that they both slam Adam Smith (and they slam him for good true reasons, like his plagerism and hypocrisy late in life). But it is my opinion that Adam Smith is still a good writer and is worth the reading too, if one has never read his works and has the time to read him.

So! You want to understand the history of this stuff? I recommend a trilogy:
This book, "Free Market, by Jacob Soll"
also "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought" by Murray Rothbard,
and finally Adam Smith's works, particularly "The Wealth of Nations".

This trio of books presents a balanced view of these topics which none of them provides as a stand-alone book.

There is another book that I would recommend as an optional pre-qual to this "trilogy", and that would be "A Conflict of Visions", by Thomas Sowell, which will help you reconcile data from conflicting storytellers' slanted perspectives and help you understand people who you disagree with. It's a wonderful book, and probably a necessary read before taking on a challenge like this trilogy, where at every turn, there is a conflict of visions.

Anyway. I'm grateful that my friend recommended this book to me. I recommend it to you as part of this unofficial trilogy.

Interesting book, pretty monotone reading

I think the contents of the book are interesting and match the title well enough not to be misleading or surprising - but I wish the vocal performance used more inflection and conveyed more emotion than it did.