ABSTRACT
An extreme statement, perhaps, and certainly more understandable in relation to Latin
America than to the United States. Yet it is worth reflecting on a little. The claim is that free markets require some kinds of social coercion, implying that the working of free
markets, bringing profitability to capital (belonging to the few), will normally endanger the prosperity of the general public. By contrast, the traditional theory holds that free
markets will bring prosperity to all. Yet we have shown that this theory applies only to a
very special institutional context, a system of family firms and family farms. Galeano’s Latin America, with landless peasants working haciendas and crowded barrios in the
cities, hardly qualifies-and neither does the contemporary USA. In both of these cases, the free market becomes a free-for-all, a struggle in which the most powerful, the best
positioned and the luckiest make off with all the prizes. It is easy to understand why the
well-placed few applaud free markets.
