ABSTRACT
One of the most striking and far-reaching transformations that has taken place in the language of modern political thought concerns the use of the word “freedom.” Once used to distinguish the members of a social and political elite from those-women, slaves, serfs, menial laborers, and foreigners-who did not enjoy their privileges or share their ethos, the term is now typically used to refer to the unregulated and unsupervised behavior of individuals-especially, though not exclusively, in the market. So complete is this shift in usage that the phrase “free market” sounds almost redundant to our ears, and the “libertarian,” the partisan of liberty, is generally understood to be a person who favors the extension of market norms and practices into nearly all areas of life. Thus the language of freedom, which was once highly moralized and fundamentally inegalitarian, is now fundamentally (if only formally) egalitarian, and has been largely drained of moral content: freedom, in colloquial terms, means doing as one likes and allowing others to do likewise. Moreover, where the enjoyment of freedom was once thought to depend on a carefully designed and highly fragile set of formal and informal institutions, the uncoordinated actions of “free” individuals are now said to be capable of generating “spontaneous order”—again, especially, though not exclusively, through the mechanism of the market. These dramatic changes in usage are of more than merely historical interest, because freedom has over the same period of time become one of the most potent words in our political lexicon, and the effort to expand the use of the market as a means of realizing social outcomes has greatly intensified, especially in recent decades. Indeed, it seems likely that these developments are related-that the widespread and growing influence of market ideology depends in part on its ability to speak in the language and with the authority of freedom.
