The Italian Enlightenment, no less than the Scottish, was central to the emergence of political economy and creation of market societies. Sophus Reinert turns to Milan in the late 1700s to recover early socialists¿ preoccupations with the often lethal tension among states, markets, and human welfare, and the policies these ideas informed.

Sophus A. Reinert is Marvin Bower Associate Professor at Harvard Business School.