Rougier began to put forward a more explicit agenda in his article “Retour au libéralisme” in the Revue de Paris at the beginning of 1938 and a book, Les mystiques économiques, that followed months later. These two texts lament the apparent devolution of po liti cal debate to a choice between fascism and communism, both of which he perceived to renounce the advantages of a liberal system: namely, the division of labor, the circulation of capital, the cosmopolitanism of culture, the dignity of the individual conceived as an end, the security provided by a stable judicial system, the free choice of consumers, and the freedom of thought. … He shared Lippmann’s belief that new economic solutions would require overcoming a static adoption of laissezfaire, which he labeled “la mystique libérale.”

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 177