The Great Persuasion, Angus Burgin
The Great Persuasion, Angus Burgin
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The Great Persuasion
Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression

Author: Angus Burgin

Narrator: Derek Shetterly

Unabridged: 10 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 02/19/2013


Synopsis

Just as today’s observers struggle to justify the workings of the free market in the wake of a global economic crisis, an earlier generation of economists revisited their worldviews following the Great Depression. The Great Persuasion is an intellectual history of that project. Angus Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider many of the most basic assumptions of our market-centered world.

Conservatives often point to Friedrich Hayek as the most influential defender of the free market. By examining the work of such organizations as the Mont Pèlerin Society, an international association founded by Hayek in 1947 and later led by Milton Friedman, Burgin reveals that Hayek and his colleagues were deeply conflicted about many of the enduring problems of capitalism. Far from adopting an uncompromising stance against the interventionist state, they developed a social philosophy that admitted significant constraints on the market. Postwar conservative thought was more dynamic and cosmopolitan than has previously been understood.

It was only in the 1960s and ’70s that Friedman and his contemporaries developed a more strident defense of the unfettered market. Their arguments provided a rhetorical foundation for the resurgent conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and inspired much of the political and economic agenda of the United States in the ensuing decades. Burgin’s brilliant inquiry uncovers both the origins of the contemporary enthusiasm for the free market and the moral quandaries it has left behind.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Matt on May 21, 2021

A really fantastic history of the rise and influence of the Mont Pelerin Society, with special attention to the ideas of Walter Lippmann, Wilhelm Röpke, Friedrich Hayek. And Milton Friedman. Fair and thorough, and a quite enjoyable read to boot. Highly recommended.......more

Goodreads review by Ingmar on June 24, 2017

Economic History, focusing on free-market economics (laissez-faire, neoliberalism, libertarianism, etc) since 1930's-now, which started off as an alternative to Keynesian Interventionism to combat Depression, Fascism and Communism. Will help you understand how these free-market ideas evolved and got......more

Goodreads review by Ben on January 24, 2016

As Angus Burgin illustrates in The Great Persuasion, the MPS “perceived their role…to be one of precipitating long-term ideological change.” Friedrich Hayek was the dominant voice in the early MPS, and its president from 1947-1961. Under Hayek’s guidance, the society sought to find a third way, an a......more

Goodreads review by Eoin on October 18, 2019

Jesus... I've a keen interest in this topic and a high tolerance for long winded writing as long as the topic is something I want to learn about. But this book was just too boring, even for me. It had nothing to do with the subject - which has been written about more engagingly elsewhere. It was ent......more

Goodreads review by Jarno Mehtiö on May 25, 2021

Keynesin elämänkerran verrokiksi. Tämä hyvä myös. Heille tärkeätä oli vapaus. Osasivat myös tehdä sen eteen töitä ja lobata. Mutta kirjassa nostetaan merkittäviä eroja Hayekin ja Friedmanin välillä (nämä kaksi päähahmoa, paljon muitakin). Hayek oli jossain määrin valmiimpin kompromisseihin (johtuiko......more