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Liberalism, and the market forces it has traditionally championed, helped to undermine and overthrow the old order of the status society which characterized human social existence from the dawn of history up until around the eighteenth century. The old order still continues to exist in some places in the world and is not entirely vanquished even in the West. Still, the liberal revolution that occurred around the time of the eighteenth century promised to usher in a new order, replacing the status society with the contractual society.

Questioning the roots of capitalism is a favorite sport among historians and literary critics alike. Certainly the establishment of a trading colony by John Smith in Jamestown, Virginia may be nominated as the event responsible for introducing the concept of free-trade to the new world; but in the lasting religious/cultural influence of the puritans, a severe obstruction to the spread of capitalist economics through New England had taken root.

Liberalism and Anarcho-Capitalism: The Austrian School of Economics, edited by Dario Antiseri, Enzo Di Nuoscio, and Francesco Di Iorio: http://www.nuovaciviltadellemacchine.it

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Persuasion, 1968