ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the ways in which the classical liberal attitude to orthodox market freedom has and has not been criticized from within the tradition of social liberalism that began to emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the social liberal critique of market freedom has largely taken the form of a rejection of the idea of the prioritization of the formal rights of private ownership and freedom of contract that secure market freedom. The geo-classical view is that the contribution made by society to the creation of wealth is reflected in the rental value of land, and that the protection of rights of private ownership extends to the protection of rights of bequest and inheritance. In the work of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, the chapter focuses on both a more positive endorsement of the geo-classical approach to the question of private property in land, and a powerful case for the restriction of market freedom.
