The competing frameworks, and the arguments between them.
11 topics · 16 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Friedrich Engels · 1880
Distinguishes earlier utopian socialism, which appealed to reason and moral outrage, from Marx's, which Engels presents as a scientific analysis of…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Use of Knowledge in Society
Friedrich Hayek · 1945
The economic problem is the dispersal of knowledge, and prices are the mechanism that aggregates what no planner can collect.
+4 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
David Ricardo · 1817
Argues that comparative advantage makes trade gainful even for a country worse at producing everything, and that rent accrues to landowners from…
+9 more at this level
12 of 16 works
Friedrich Engels
Distinguishes earlier utopian socialism, which appealed to reason and moral outrage, from Marx's, which Engels presents as a scientific analysis of capitalism's internal contradictions driving it toward socialism.
about 1.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Friedrich Hayek
The economic problem is the dispersal of knowledge, and prices are the mechanism that aggregates what no planner can collect.
12 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Adam Smith
A nation's wealth comes from the productivity gains of specialisation and the division of labour, coordinated not by design but by each person pursuing their own interest within a system of markets.
Assumes no economics, but real stamina: the digressions are long and the famous passages are a small part of it
about 25 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyThorstein Veblen
Much consumption by the wealthy is not about the goods themselves but about visibly wasting time and money to signal status — 'conspicuous consumption', coined here as a challenge to treating consumer choice as need-driven.
about 7 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Milton Friedman
Argues the Phillips curve trade-off between inflation and unemployment only holds temporarily, because once inflation is expected it stops buying any reduction in unemployment at all — the case for treating money growth, not discretionary policy, as the lever.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Douglas W. Rae (YaleCourses)
Argues that capitalism is a set of institutions that must be continually repaired rather than a natural equilibrium, using the rise and failure of specific firms as the evidence.
link checked 17 Sept 2026David Ricardo
Argues that comparative advantage makes trade gainful even for a country worse at producing everything, and that rent accrues to landowners from scarcity rather than from anything they contribute.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026John Stuart Mill
Separates the laws of production, which Mill takes to be physical and fixed, from the laws of distribution, which are human arrangements and can be changed — the move that lets classical economics argue about reform at all.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026Karl Marx
Profit under capitalism originates in surplus value extracted from labour rather than in exchange, and the system's own dynamics drive it toward crisis and concentration — a foundational critique still argued over by economists and historians alike.
Assumes Smith and Ricardo at least in outline, since Volume I is a critique that assumes its target is known
link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyWilliam Stanley Jevons
Recasts economics as the mathematics of marginal utility, arguing that value comes from the utility of the last unit consumed rather than from labour embodied in a good.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Notes on this copyCarl Menger
Founds the Austrian School by deriving value from the subjective, marginal importance a good has for satisfying a particular want, rather than from labour or cost of production.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John R. Hicks
Translates Keynes's General Theory into a two-equation diagram of goods and money market equilibrium — the IS-LM model that turned Keynesian economics into a teachable school rather than one difficult book.
link checked 17 Sept 2026