After the Second World War, there was a revival, we could say, of the ideology of free initiative and faith in the free market in the United States. This phenomenon sparked a lively interest among our conservatives.

We usually think that conservatism is solely a matter of self-interest and a tendency toward moral rebellion, violence in expression, and a somewhat religious mindset of revelation. This perception is not correct. Ideas exert their influence in all directions. They are not absent from anywhere.

The ideology of the free market, therefore, regained prestige because the dominant ideas of the nineteenth century re-emerged, as they were articulated in the most absolute way by Bentham, and as the classical economists later applied them to the problems of economic policy and Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner to the problems of sociology and politics.

(...) [Excerpt from the text of the introduction]