When any system is replaced by another, as in the Soviet system of command being replaced by a market system, the new system will require appropriate institutions. The dogmatic view on free markets is the view that such institutions would emerge of their own accord without the visible hand of government.

free market argument. The belief that the emergence of such institutions requires deliberate planning amounts to the pragmatic free market argument. The requisite institutions have to be created by the visible hand of government.

We have thus an example in which the hand behind the invisible hand is visible, in line, therefore, with Mittermaier’s presentation of the pragmatic view in which humans deliberately decide upon an institutional framework within which an invisible hand is supposed to operate. If, however, we were to argue that the appropriate institutional arrangements would have emerged of their own accord, in other words without such planning, Mittermaier would classify us among the ranks of the dogmatic free marketeers. For a dogmatic free marketeer, the hand behind the invisible hand is also invisible.

Two hands appear in Mittermaier’s title and at least one is invisible. Is the other also invisible? By considering answers to the question, Mittermaier classifies a stance on the free market as either dogmatic or pragmatic.