Certainly, capitalism was initially part of the early modern liberation project, along with democracy, the freedom of thought, the rule of law, and so on. Then we learned what happened when capitalism is unleashed, how it corrodes the rest of free society. That lesson became clear in history and sociology, less so in economics. Although economists came around to acknowledging the problems with capitalism, the orthodox economic tradition maintains that capitalism can be tuned like a machine so that it reaches an optimal equilibrium. We need merely adjust the metaphor, though, to think of the tuning as more like the muzzle on a beast's maw.