Angus Burgin, The great persuasion: Reinventing free markets since the depression Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. 320 Pages. USD 29.95 (cloth)

摘要

Angus Burgin received the 2010 Joseph Dorfinan Prize from the History of Economics Society for the dissertation on which this book is based. It is an excellent history of ideas about the role of markets in society and of advocacy for free markets since the Great Depression. Until recently, historians commonly viewed American conservatism in psychological terms, such as Richard Hofstadter did in "The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt" (1954-55) and The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965). The presumption was that there were no intellectual or ethical foundations for conservatism. All the intelligent people and all the good people were "progressives." The Great Persuasion is a welcome addition to new work by historians who are finding and writing about the intellectual and moral foundations of conservatism. Readers of this journal may object that advocates of free markets should not be called conservatives, but rather classical liberals or libertarians. The problem of accurately labeling the political and economic philosophy that lends support to free markets is one of the threads in Burgin's story. A related thread is the tension that existed within the community that "reinvented free markets." The enthusiasm for free markets was more qualified among cultural conservatives than among libertarian-leaning liberals.