The invisible hand’s hiddenness explains why markets lacked popular legitimacy.

Evidence

As he emphasized in his inaugural lecture at the LSE, the way forward for liberals was to learn from the failures of free market rhetoric in order to initiate a long-term process of ideological change. He worried that the masses were deluded by the promise of reason and science to direct social reform. While the scientific economist cautioned against government interference, the layman demanded immediate change in society. The lack of legitimacy of a market economy lay precisely with the hidden nature of the economic problem—the invisibility of Adam Smith’s hand. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 67

Categorization

• SEED: The argument that markets failed politically because their benefits are invisible offers an angle on why pro-market rhetoric keeps failing against planned-economy appeals.
• XREF: connects to: Markets conceal their own mechanisms of visibility and knowledge production. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 283; Mass markets forced consumers to trust unseen strangers and corporations — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2631