Free Market – The History of an Idea

The Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman famously argued in Capitalism and Freedom (1962) that free markets were a necessary condition for political freedom, as well as being the only true motor of economic growth. In his provocative and ambitious new book Free Market – The History of an Idea (Basic Books, 2022), Professor Jacob Soll suggests that studying the history of economic thought back to Cicero suggests praise for free markets was usually bound up with Ciceronian moral philosophy and a greater degree of state intervention than mid-twentieth century free marketeers countenanced.

Jacob Soll is Professor of History and Accounting at the University of Southern California.