4,249 works (including 483 books, 3,406 articles and 357 historical documents), 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable.
How did economists once attacked as dangerous innovators come to be dismissed as bourgeois reactionaries? This unsigned 1895 review, attributed to Carl Menger, finds the reversal revealing of the classics’ critics rather than the classics themselves. Praising Richard Schüller’s book of the same title, the reviewer defends Smith, Malthus, Say, and Ricardo in his practical essays as evidence-minded reformers who challenged privilege while counselling prudence. Against German historical and social-policy schools, he argues that their writings anticipated contemporary demands for social reform despite the limits of their historical experience. This brief polemic offers a pointed distinction between acknowledging those limits and accepting inherited caricatures of classical economics.