In The Invention of Market Freedom, Eric MacGilvray traces the development of the market notion of freedom (roughly, “doing as one likes and allowing others to do likewise” [1]) from its republican and natural-law antecedents. His goal is to “explain how the market came to hold such a privileged place in modern thinking about freedom” (2), with the ultimate purpose of addressing contemporary social debates. MacGilvray succeeds admirably in achieving his proximate end—The Invention of Market Freedom is an informative guide through a great deal of intellectual history. With regard to his final end, however, he would have helped his readers make greater use of the material he presents by paying more attention to how contemporary arguments about markets both appeal to and ignore their historical antecedents. It is not clear, for example, how the development of the idea of market freedom sheds light on the actual (largely ahistorical) promarket arguments advanced by libertarian thinkers. That being said, MacGilvray has written a detailed genealogy of various ideas about freedom, providing a rich resource for those whose primary interest is to engage in the contemporary discussion of the proper role of markets.

MacGilvray's story about freedom starts with free men—the class of those who are not slaves, serfs, women, and so forth. Natural law analyses treat freedom as the legal status of such men—in the absence of particular constraints a free person does what he wants. This condition of natural liberty was thought to have both good and bad aspects, in that it allows for both virtue and vice (voluntary actions can have positive or negative moral worth). Where ensuring compliance with the natural law is the ultimate goal, carefully setting limits on the realm of natural liberty is an obvious tool for pursuing that end. Postmedieval thinkers in the juristic tradition often thought in terms of trading natural liberty for goods available only through constraints.

Republican thinkers held that being a free man in terms of status was good to the extent that you were not subject to arbitrary power, and so were in a position to pursue virtue. True freedom, on this account, goes beyond a legal status—it requires self-sufficiency, or at least insulation from the whims of the powerful. (This focus on limiting dependence helps explain the traditional republican emphasis on the structure of political interaction.) The basic republican account of freedom, MacGilvray points out, has some important ambiguities. What makes power arbitrary? For example, is predictability enough to legitimize the exercise of power in a polity or must power be directed toward achieving certain (presumably common) purposes? What is the point of virtue? Is it an independent goal that all should strive for or is it merely an instrument for achieving other (perhaps more personal) ends? Different forms of republicanism take different views on these issues.

The rise of commerce created new problems for old views about freedom, and so led to new views. In the natural-law tradition, scholastic thinkers defended private property on instrumental grounds, and so helped provided a justification for trade. Republican defenders of commerce borrowed from this scholastic brief, but gave it a self-sufficiency spin. Markets, they argue, insulate citizens from arbitrary (political) power because they provide opportunities and involve impersonal (and often anonymous) interactions. Commerce, then, does not constitute arbitrary power for the same reason that nature does not—each provides a background for interaction that does not play favorites. Further, markets are supposed to promote the spread of virtue—certain positive attitudes are essential to commercial success. These discussions about commercial society led to a synthesis of ideas that resulted in the market notion of freedom. On this account, freedom is a sphere of choice (natural-law heritage) that must be protected from outside, and so arbitrary, interference (republican heritage) because the ability to choose is valuable. Choice itself is now understood normatively as the goal for which we should cultivate (certain) virtues. Protection of a sphere where people make their own choices goes together with an instrumental conception of virtue.

The foregoing synopsis of MacGilvray's account barely scratches the surface because The Invention of Market Freedom is a dense book. It covers a good deal of history and does so at a pretty fine level of detail. MacGilvray also does a nice job of summing up the state of his analysis periodically. His historical interpretation flows nicely from position to position, but given the number of positions and thinkers he considers, MacGilvray can't go into all of the arguments that drive the developments he is tracing. It is not always clear, then, what considerations were influential in which transitions. There is a lot of what without all of the corresponding why. MacGilvray's claims about particular arguments and historical figures seem quite plausible, but he does not have the space (not would his readers have the patience) for arguments that would establish his interpretations against competitors. (MacGilvray supports his attributions, of course, mostly with quotations, but that is not the same as considering alternative readings.)

MacGilvray's focus on intellectual continuity and evolutionary developments also misses some big innovations. One of the distinguishing features of contemporary market analyses of freedom, for example, is the great value assigned to liberty. In many libertarian circles, noninterference with others has deontological significance—there is thought to be no justification for interfering with freedom. MacGilvray seems to be skeptical. He thinks that “the defenders of the free market are able to … exaggerate the merits of market-based solutions” (181) and that “we have reason to suspect that ideological rather than logical imperatives are at work” (9). I agree with this skepticism, but it is hard to see why MacGilvray thinks as he does because he never engages with the arguments offered by the defenders of market freedom. MacGilvray's historical account has freedom emerging as valuable, but he does not explain how it becomes the primary, or even sole, value for some. The way in which freedom is valued by contemporary market advocates seems discontinuous with the republican and juristic traditions.

All in all, I think that The Invention of Market Freedom is quite a good book. It is not an easy read. It is not a “one-stop shop” for understanding all there is to know about market-based understandings of freedom. It does, however, provide a nuanced account of the historical antecedents of such understandings, and that is valuable thing.