Selling the Free Market

Reviews / Votes

Aune's book is a timely and incisive analysis of a politically seductive rhetoric--the appeal to market forces to organize ever-increasing aspects of our private and public lives. By using the tools of rhetorical analysis in a series of readings, ranging from Ayn Rand's novels and cyberpunk fiction to the political speeches of Ronald Reagan and Patrick Buchanan, Aune discloses the devices in free-market rhetoric that eclipse reasoned debate and limit our vision of community, work, and personal relations. This text will be useful for upper-level courses in political communication as well as those courses that are beginning to study economic globalization and its impact on society.--Robert Cox, Department of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

...Aune targets the free-market commanders with elegant precision.--The Washington Monthly

The book is unique; a reasoned criticism from the left of the rhetoric of the free market...It is a beautifully written attack on free-market ideology using the resources of classical and modern rhetoric...It's a masterful work.--Deirdre McCloskey, author of The Rhetoric of Economics, University of Iowa

This book offers a penetrating and provocative look at today's market, how it is understood, and how it is being promoted in most every sector of society. In particular, Aune's analysis helps us to get beyond the taken-for-grantedness of the market, looking behind the slogans to reveal how what is often assumed to be 'natural' or 'inevitable' actually involves a hard sell. Aune moves deftly from principles of rhetoric to key ideas in economics to show how the market has become the most common way of expressing who we are and what we do in the contemporary United States.--George Cheney, Department of Communication Studies, University of Montana-Missoula; author of Values at Work

This book offers a carefully articulated treatment of what is perhaps the most important discourse of our time: the academic rhetoric underlying Reaganist, Thatcherist, and neoliberal economic theories. Aune's incisive analysis will be invaluable reading for anyone who is interested in the relationships between organizational action and sociopolitical structures--or who is concerned about the widespread and uncritical acceptance of what George Soros has called free-market fundamentalism.--Charles Conrad, Texas A&M University
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