This book provides an overview or an introduction to the development of economic thought from the time of the early Greek and Roman writers to the mid-20th century. It provides a basic, no frills account of how economic ideas which were first cited by the early philosophers were later refined by the writings of the medieval schoolmen and still later by the contributions of the mercantilists and physiocrats. All these ideas were collected and synthesized by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations which provided the basis for economics as a formal subject of inquiry. From Smith’s magnum opus emerged the works of the classical economists, most notably, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and John Stuart Mill. Their work was not left unchallenged by the Utopian Socialists, the Associationists, and other social reformers and most importantly by Karl Marx. Nevertheless, classical economics was not to be denied thanks to Alfred Marshall who succeeded in fusing the Austrians’ concept of utility on the demand side with the classicists’ cost of production on the supply side of the market to provide a new theory of value. He gave new life to the classicists with his Neo-Classicism, the basis for microeconomics, to be followed fifty years later by Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and the ushering in of macroeconomics.

Karl Marx’s History of Economic Theories from the Physiocrats to Adam Smith is Part I of the legendary but previously untranslated Volume IV of Marx’s Capital. Although it was written some ninety years ago, it remained unpublished until the first German edition appeared in 1904. Originally, Marx had intended to prepare the first three volumes for publication, then, from the remaining mass of manuscript, to extract a final volume constituting a history of theories of surplus value. Engels, who became Marx’s literary executor, was unable to follow this plan during his lifetime and assigned the task to Kautsky. Kautsky, however, found it impossible to carry out the project in the form intended. Much of the material indicated by Marx and Engels for inclusion in Volume IV had already been covered, in part at least, in the three preceding volumes. Consequently, the work as it now stands does not follow Marx’s precise plan. It is more comprehensive in scope, deals with economic theories whose relation to surplus value and profit is not immediate, and more closely approaches a complete and critical history of economic theories than the narrower concept which Marx had had in mind.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1840.