Suspicions of Markets ─ Critical Attacks from Aristotle to the Twenty-first Century

In this work, Rutherford reviews why Adam Smith, Hayek, Mises and others praised economic markets, with a view to understanding, in contrast, historical attacks on markets dating as far back as Aristotle. The market has long been criticized as an inappropriate method of allocation, encouraging market participants to misbehave for the sake of personal gain, and creating an impersonal new market culture. This book traces how such attacks have become more vociferous in recent centuries, especially with the rise of socialism. Most recently the critique has broadened to include toxic markets and the excessive marketization of activities hitherto external to the market. Analysing these major criticisms, as well as the value of regulation, utopias and virtue ethics as a means of avoiding future suspicions of markets, the author lays the groundwork for the reader’s own assessment of the arguments, and concludes by posing suggestions of how best we might cope with flawed markets in the future.

Donald Rutherford is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, having previously worked as an investment analyst and financial journalist in the City of London. He has taught a range of courses over the years, including labour economics, the trade cycle, economic policy and comparative economic systems. Rutherford has drawn on this breadth of expertise to write a dictionary of economics, first published in 1992. He currently specialises in the history of economic thought.