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[This article was originally submitted to the Austrian Economics Newsletter but is previously unpublished.] Alexander Gray (1882–1968) is my favorite historian of economic thought. A Scottish professor of political economy, first at Aberdeen University and then at the University of Edinburgh, Gray’s writings were not voluminous, but his two great

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An audio version of this Mises Daily, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available as a free download .]   The honor of putting the final boot to the usury prohibition belongs to the 17th-century classicist and Dutch

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . ] John Calvin’s social and economic views closely parallel Luther’s, and there is no point in repeating them here. There are only two main areas of difference: their views on usury, and on the concept of the

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An audio version of this Mises Daily, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available as a free download .]   “Nicolaus Copernicus” by Jan Matejko (late 1800s) Turning from the Protestants and the Anabaptist extremists,

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An audio version of this Mises Daily, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available as a free download .]   George Buchanan (1506–1582) The most fascinating as well as the most radical of the Calvinist theorists of the

The grant of a 1974 Nobel Prize in Economic Science to the great Austrian free-market economist Dr. Friedrich A. von Hayek comes as a welcome and blockbuster surprise to his free-market admirers in this country and throughout the world. For since the death last year of Hayek’s distinguished mentor, Ludwig von Mises, the 75-year-old Hayek ranks as

[ An Objective Theory of Probability • By D.A. Gillies • Methuen, 1973 • 250 pages. This review originally appeared in the Libertarian Review , 1975.]   Ludwig von Mises’s brother, Richard, was a distinguished mathematician, philosopher, and aeronautical engineer. While, in contrast to Ludwig, Richard was an ardent positivist, he made a

[Introduction to The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie, written 1552–53.]   Étienne de La Boétie has been best remembered as the great and close friend of the eminent essayist Michel de Montaigne, in one of history’s most notable friendships. But he would be better remembered, as some historians

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An audio version of this Mises Daily, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available as a free download .]   By the 12th century, the Italian city-states had evolved a new form of government, new at least since ancient

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An audio version of this Mises Daily, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available as a free download .]   The Italian humanists had propounded the doctrine of absolute political rule, first by republican oligarchs and