The different strands of radical thought seek to lift a veil from our eyes in order to emancipate us from domination, cowardice, or repression. They … - Bernard Harcourt

The notion that human interaction could spontaneously and autonomously achieve a stable, orderly, self-sustaining form of equilibrium in the absence of government intervention—what François Quesnay and the first school of économistes dubbed un ordre naturel in the late 1750s—has facilitated a conception of the market as a self-regulating system that could only prosper by purging itself of the prejudicial meddling of governments and politics. In the face of this new conception of an orderly market, governance would be relegated outside that autonomous space, charged with the responsibility of policing and punishing those who deviate—those who do not see the natural laws or, in more technical jargon, who bypass the market.

The idea of natural order, in effect, masks the state’s role. ... Robert Hale ... demonstrated the extent to which the distribution of income and wealth is the product of legal rules we choose to impose. Hale trained our attention on the foundational rules of property and contract law, showing how free, voluntary, compensated exchange is in fact a product of the legal coercion that the government establishes through its role in defining property rights.

The doctrine of laissez-faire in the mid-nineteenth century essentially allowed three functions for the government: first, maintaining the external defense of the country; second, providing for the internal order and security of persons; and third, possibly, providing for minimal public amenities. ... Criminalization and punishment became, undisputedly, the most legitimate and competent task of the government. There, for sure, government intervention was proper, necessary, legitimate, and competent. There, natural orderliness had to be replaced by governmental ordering.