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History of economic thought

History of economic thought
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Overview

The history of economic thought is the study of the philosophies of the different thinkers and theories in the subjects that later became political economy and economics, from the ancient world to the present day.

This field encompasses many disparate schools of economic thought. Ancient Greek writers such as the philosopher Aristotle examined ideas about the art of wealth acquisition, and questioned whether property is best left in private or public hands. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell goods at a just price.

In the Western world, economics was not a separate discipline, but part of philosophy until the 18th–19th century Industrial Revolution and the 19th century Great Divergence, which accelerated economic growth.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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  1. They appeared as immediate forerunners of the famous Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810, in which Ricardo’s views were adopted.[133] The singular circumstance, that Ricardo and his adherents, who held money to be merely a token of value, are called bullionists, is due not only to the name of that committee, but also to the nature of their theory. In his work on political economy, Ricardo repeated and developed…

    Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

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  2. Of this nature is the fallacy in what is called, by Adam Smith and others, the Mercantile Theory in Political Economy. That theory sets out from the common maxim, that whatever brings in money enriches; or that every one is rich in proportion to the quantity of money he obtains. From this it is concluded that the value of any branch of trade, or of the trade of the country altogether, consists in the balance of…

    John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

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  3. But a different view of the relations of mind and matter, mind and body, intelligence and social service, is better than Aristotle's conception only if it helps render the old idea obsolete in fact--in the actual conduct of life and education. Aristotle was permanently right in assuming the inferiority and subordination of mere skill in performance and mere accumulation of external products to understanding…

    John Dewey, Democracy and Education

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Philosophers who discussed History of economic thought

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Philosophy and economics.

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