… based on commercial relations; fourth, that after the French Revolution, the term was abandoned by the advocates of free-market capitalism and became the watchword of socialists and critics of free trade in the nineteenth century. Concepts > … century to opposing it in the nineteenth century. The French Revolution marked the turning point: once its early ‘free-market’ policies failed to create the equality and solidarity envisaged by their advocates, economic liberals distanced … Pierre-Paul Le Mercier de la Rivière. This advocate of Physiocracy (an economic theory privileging agriculture and free markets) believed that society should be grounded in the principle of ‘reciprocal utility’, that is, of ‘mutual aid’ …