An Economics Reading List

Capitalism and Socialism

Barry, Norman, “The Tradition of Spontaneous Order” (Literature of Liberty, 1982)

Brief Review

Boettke, Peter, Why Perestroika Failed : The Politics and Economics of Socialist Transformation

Boettke, Peter, The Collapse of Development Planning

Boettke, Peter, The Collapse of Development Planning

Hayek, F. A., (ed.), Capitalism and the Historians

Kuran, Timur, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification

Mises, Ludwig, Socialism

Molinari, Gustave de, The Society of To-morrow

Sweeping look at a world evolving from a state of war and expropriation to one of peace and liberty. Molinari proposes and explores interesting implications of competitive economic theory, such as competitively supplied governments replacing historical nationalities.
See also the Annotated Bibliography of Gustave de Molinari, by David Hart.

O’Rourke, P. J., Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics

Rapacyznski, Andrezj, Roman Frydman and Kenneth Murphy, (eds.), Capitalism with a Comrade’s Face

Rogge, Benjamin A., Can Capitalism Survive? 1979

Benjamin Rogge (1920-1980, Professor at Wabash College, Indiana) collected together his entertaining essays in a volume titled after one of his most famous essays, Can Capitalism Survive? He touches on dozens of topics useful in the classroom and exciting as provocative reading, from the economics of cities (Part VII), to one of his favorites: how to finance education (Part VIII), to the ways in which capitalism and free trade are discussed by the press, politicians, and in the classroom.

Spencer, Herbert The Man Versus The State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom. 1992; first published 1884.

Herbert Spencer’s collection of essays on sociology, political organization, representative government, and the role of government arrived at the cusp of classical liberal thought. Opposed to both imperialism and socialism (because each ultimately depended on servitude—slavery to an outside force as opposed to individual freedom), Spencer struggled to present his ideas to a world that, during his lifetime, continued inexorably down those very paths.

Six more of his essays on related topics, originally published between 1843 and 1891 in a variety of the many magazines to which Spencer contributed and sometimes served as editor, have been added in subsequent editions, and are available in this Econlib edition.

See also these other related Econlib works:

Brief Biography of Herbert Spencer

“The Secret History of the Dismal Science.” Historical overview contrasting the undercurrent of attitudes toward race and slavery by economists and non-economists during the mid- to late-1800s.

“The Tradition of Spontaneous Order” by Norman Barry

“F. A. Hayek and the Rebirth of Classical Liberalism” by John N. Gray

Imperialism by John A. Hobson.

The Postulates of English Political Economy by Walter Bagehot. Contempory work by Spencer’s fellow-editor at The Economist.

Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy