Since the work of Jill Gordon (1997) it ought to be common knowledge that J.S. Mill did not defend the idea that the market place of ideas would inevitably lead to truth. (This fits with my own view that I have expressed over quite a number of digressions: see, for example, here; here, and here.) Unfortunately, this leaves a bit puzzling how the phrase and idea came to be associated with his name and a kind of (providential) liberal faith. (And depending one's political commitments this is a sign of liberal naivete or well grounded liberal optimism.) Moreover, most sophisticated liberals would never assert that markets always produce optimal outcomes, so lurking here is also a question about the mechanism. (I return to that below.)
I suspect that true scholars are familiar with the fact that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's dissent in Abrams v United States (1919) is often thought to originate the idea and closely associated phrase. (As it happens Holmes did re-read Mill's On Liberty that year.) But Holmes wrote, "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." This does not actually claim that truth will prevail in the market for ideas (and does not use the phrase 'marketplace of ideas' at all). Holmes' position is more sober than that. I am persuaded by Vincent Blasi (2004) that Holmes never intended the providential claim about the competition of ideas. (Blasi is also the source of my claim that Holmes did read Mill.)
In a footnote (41), Blasi suggests that in 1935, David M. Newbold used the phrase "market place of ideas" first in a letter to the New York Times. But as quoted by Blasi that letter does not connect it to generation of truth (but to 'public opinion.') It's likely that this Newbold was the author of a book called Notes on the Introduction of Equity Jurisdiction Into Maryland:1634-1720. So he was probably a lawyer or law professor. In a Denver Law Review article of 1940, one can read that "Our entire system of free public education is based upon it and out of it has developed the American type of government of public opinion. Our people from the earliest days, unconsciously perhaps, have been demonstrating in every generation their faith in the doctrine that the test of truth is its "ability to get itself accepted" in the marketplace of ideas." This clearly quotes Holmes, but with Newbold's phrase. The first connection between the 'market place of ideas' and 'truth' that I have been able to find with some googling is in Senate testimony in June, 1941, by Mr. Louis G. Caldwell, an attorney representing mutual broadcasting system to the Interstate Commerce committee (here). The context is freedom of speech (and the role radio has in expanding it or not). A decade later the phrase, and its connection to truth is much more widespread. But I have been unable to find anyone expressing the idea that the marketplace of ideas leads to truth, and that somehow Mill had defended it before 1960.
In 1960, the very eminent law professor, Harry Kalven Jr. did a kind of retrospective in The Chicago Law Review on the Scopes trial to celebrate the (near) centenary of Darwin's Origin of Species. To people who have any association with The University of Chicago, and those who have studied debates on academic freedom, Kalven's name is quite familiar (recall here on the Kalven report). The retrospective is interesting in its own right. But here I just quote a passage: "It is keyed, in the tradition-honored phrases of Milton, Mill, and Holmes, to confidence that truth will not be bested in a fair fight, to competition in the marketplace of ideas." (p. 516) Kalven's own view is not quite this, I think. But that's for another time. The quoted passages does come pretty close to the idea usually associated to Mill. (And unusually for memetics, also provides evidence for the role of Holmes in the process.)* And since Kalven was important and influential it is not unlikely he is the source of connecting Mill to truth prevailing in the marketplace of ideas (which starts to circulate widely in the 1960s).
That's the best I can do on this. I am open to learning from other people's search abilities. I could close here, but I was still left with a puzzle how the idea mistakenly associated with Mill came to be thought of as somehow intrinsic to liberalism. And I think I have a (surprising) answer to that, although it is a bit convoluted. I quote a long paragraph:
De Maistre and Donoso Cortes were incapable of such "organic" thinking. De Maistre showed this by his total lack of understanding of Schelling's philosophy of life; Donoso Cortes was gripped by horror when he was confronted with Hegelianism in Berlin in 1849. Both were diplomats and politicians with much experience and practice and had concluded sufficiently sensible compromises. But a systematic and metaphysical compromise was to them inconceivable. To suspend the decision at the crucial point by denying that there was at all something to be decided upon must have appeared to them to be a strange pantheistic confusion. Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortes only in that short interim period in which it was possible to answer the question "Christ or Barabbas?" with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation. Such a position was not accidental but was based on liberal metaphysics. The bourgeoisie is the class committed to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and it did not arrive at those freedoms from any kind of arbitrary psychological and economic conditions, from thinking in terms of trade, or the like. It has long been known that the idea of the liberal rights of man stemmed from the North American states. Though Georg Jellinek recently demonstrated the North American origin of those freedoms, the thesis would hardly have surprised the Catholic philosopher of the state (nor, incidentally, would it have surprised Karl Marx, the author of the essay on the Jewish question). Further, the economic postulates of free trade and commerce are, for an examination within the realm of the history of ideas, only derivatives of a metaphysical core. Donoso Cortes in his radical intellectuality saw only the theology of the foe. He did not "theologize" in the least; there were no ambiguous, mystical combinations and analogies, no Orphic oracle. The letters about actual political questions revealed a sober attitude, often frightening and without any sort of illusion or any touch of the quixotic; in his systematic train of thought there was an effort to be concise in the good dogmatic tradition of theology. His intuition into things intellectual was therefore often striking. His definition of the bourgeoisie as a clasa discutidora and his recognition that its religion resides in freedom of speech and of the press are examples. I do not consider this to be the last word on Continental liberalism in its entirety, but it is certainly a most striking observation. In view of the system of a Condorcet, for example, whose typical meaning Wolzendorff, perhaps because of intellectual affinity, recognized and superbly described, one must truly believe that the ideal of political life consists in discussing, not only in the legislative body but also among the entire population, if human society will transform itself into a monstrous club, and if truth will emerge automatically through voting. Donoso Cortes considered continuous discussion a method of circumventing responsibility and of ascribing to freedom of speech and of the press an excessive importance that in the final analysis permits the decision to be evaded. Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political detail, so it also wants to dissolve metaphysical truth in a discussion. The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion.--Schmitt (1922/1935) Political Theology, translated by George Schwab, The University of Chicago Press (2005), pp. 61-3 [Originally published as Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveranitat]+
Okay, there is much going on here. Donoso Cortés (1809 – 1853) is a fascinating character who was familiar with the first political group to call themselves 'liberal' and eventually became an ardent opponent of them. (Since Adam Smith describes his system of natural liberty as 'liberal,' I don't think it's anachronistic to claim him also as a liberal--despite learned protestations in Cambridge.) Schmitt admires both Maistre and Donoso Cortés, but as this passage reveals he also sees some of their intellectual limitations.
It is by no means easy to establish in each sentence where Donoso Cortés ends and Schmitt begins. But it's pretty clear that for them liberalism is identified with freedom of speech and the bourgeoise as the disputational/discussing class (clasa discutidora).** (Schmitt almost certainly made a transcription error because Donoso Cortés used the phrase 'las clases discutidoras' in a letter of 1851.**)
But$, strikingly, that freedom of speech will generate truth is then associated with 'the system of Condorcet.' And, in fact, given the significance given to voting in Schmitt's argument, it's pretty clear we have a kind of reference to Condorcet's famous Jury theorem. And, indeed, in the jury theorem the more voters there are (alongside some minimal assumptions) the more likely one is to reach truth. And, over time, as voting population keeps growing, this becomes pretty infallible. Here truth is a kind of outcome of a process, and it is correct to say of it that (give some modest assumptions) "truth will emerge automatically through voting."
However, I use a 'kind of reference' because the original jury theorem requires no communication among voters. So it's a pretty bad model for thinking about free speech/press.++ It's unclear to me if the conflation is in Wolzendorff or in Schmitt. Part of the historical problem is that Condorcet did also defend freedom of speech (with some attenuations) in a famous fragment from 1776.
So, here's my suggestion: Schmitt is the source of the idea that liberalism is intrinsically committed to the idea that truth naturally will emerge from free discussion. This idea is associated with Condorcet (who was indeed a proponent of freedom of speech). But it's based on a (perhaps honest) misunderstanding of the jury theorem and the role it plays in Condorcet's thought!
Schmitt's criticism of the idea he attributes to liberalism is not that it's false or a bad mechanism to discover truth, or somehow naïve. Rather, it's that it's a device to avoid decisive, existential decisions: "The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion." That's actually a sound interpretation of the liberal ideal of rule by discussion, which is all about avoiding fighting (worst possible outcome) if one can continue talking (probably bad, but not so bad).
Schmitt, a jurist himself, was very widely read. So, my hypothesis is that Schmitt's idea about the nature of liberalism as a regime of talk that will produce truth circulated among jurists (perhaps with the reference to Condorcet being dropped once it moved into Anglophone world), and at some point merged with Judge Holmes' idea to produce Kalven's formulation. Okay, that's enough speculation -- I almost wrote 'cheap talk' -- for a day.
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