The political economy of laissez-faire.(analysis of industrial economy) From: Journal of Economic Issues | Date: March 1, 2006| Author: Waller, William | COPYRIGHT 2006 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Laissez-faire has several complicated roles in our culture. It is an intellectual construct in the history of economic thought; it has significance for economic theory; it is and has been a policy proposal or position in every public policy debate in the West since the eighteenth century; it is an ideological position--a logically inconsistent part of classic liberalism, a mild embarrassment to modern liberalism; it is a fetish of the lunatic right wing of the American political sc...