Abstract

Leland B. Yeager argues that James Arnt Aune, in Selling the Free Market, does not come to grips with the core case for capitalism. Though the author names—without adequate explanation—nearly twenty rhetorical tricks allegedly employed by champions of the free market, his narrow survey of procapitalist writings focuses on applied political philosophy rather than economics. Far from using rhetoric in an exemplary way, Aune engages in name-calling and imputes guilt by supposed association. This is particularly true in a chapter on Ayn Rand, where he diagnoses the supposed personality flaws of those who would take her writings seriously