In an essay titled Freedom and Unfreedom , William T. Cavanaugh,
the Roman Catholic theologian, attempts to deconstruct the
ideology of the "free market." He takes his working definition
of free market from Milton Friedman, a classical economist who
draws heavily on free-market developer Adam Smith, who defines
freedom as the absence of external coercion in the process of
buying, selling, employing or working in the employ of another.
According to Friedman, so long as the effective freedom of
exchange is maintained, the central feature of the market
organization of economic activity is that it prevents one person
from interfering with another with respect to most of his
activities. The consumer is protected from coercion by the
seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can
deal; the seller is protected from coercion by the consumer
because of other consumers to whom she can sell; the employee is
protected from coercion by the employer because of other
employers for whom he can work, and so