Economic thought before Adam Smith
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Economic thought before Adam Smith
（An Austrian perspective on the history of economic thought / Murray N. Rothbard, v. 1）
E. Elgar, c1995
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Note
Bibliographical essay: p. 505-534
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This is the first extensive treatment from a modern Austrian perspective of the history of economic thought up to Adam Smith and as such takes into account the profound influence of religious, social and political thought upon economics. In Economic Thought before Adam Smith, Murray Rothbard contends that laissez-faire liberalism and economic thought itself began with the Catholic scholastics and early Roman and canon law, rather than with Adam Smith. The scholastics, he argues, established and developed the subjective utility and scarcity theory of value, as well as the theory that prices, or the value of money, depend on its supply and demand. This continental, or 'pre-Austrian' tradition, was destroyed, rather than developed, by Adam Smith whose strong Calvinist tendencies towards glorifying labour, toil and thrift is contrasted with the emphasis in Scholastic economic thought towards labour in the service of consumption.
Tracing economic thought from the Greeks to the Scottish Enlightenment, this book is notable for its inclusion of all the important figures in each school of thought with their theories assessed in historical context. Classical Economics, the second volume of Professor Rothbard's history of economic thought from an Austrian perspective, is also available.
Table of Contents
Contents: Introduction 1. The first philosopher-economists: the Greeks 2. The Christian Middle Ages 3. From Middle Ages to Renaissance 4. The Late Spanish scholastics 5. Protestants and Catholics 6. Absolutist thought in Italy and France 7. Mercantilism: Serving the absolutist State 8. French Mercantilistic Thought in the Seventeenth Century 9. The Liberal Reaction Against Mercantilism in Seventeenth Century France 10. Mercantilism and Freedom in England from the Tudors to the Civil War 11. Mercantilism and Freedom in England from the Civil War to 1750 12. The Founding Father of Modern Economics: Richard Cantillon 13. Physiocracy in mid-Eighteenth Century France 14. The Brilliance of Turgot 15. The Scottish Enlightenment 16. The Celebrated Adam Smith 17. The Spread of the Smithian Movement Bibliographical Essay
by "Nielsen BookData"
