“THE MOST UNCOMPROMISING AND MOST RIGOROUSLY REASONED STATEMENT OF THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM”

MISES, Ludwig von. Human Action; A Treatise on Economics. London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow: William Hodge, 1949. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. $2200.

First English edition of the landmark work by the head of the “Austrian school” of economics, in original dust jacket.

Human Action is von Mises' most important single book, a classic of free market economics and its philosophical and political foundations. "Human Action is, in short, at once the most uncompromising and most rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism that has yet appeared. If any single book can turn the ideological tide that has been running in recent years so heavily toward statism, socialism and totalitarianism, Human Action is that book. It should become the leading text of everyone who believes in freedom, in individualism, and in the ability of a free-market economy not only to outdistance any government-planned system in the production of goods and services for the masses, but to promote and safeguard, as no collectivist tyranny can ever do, those intellectual, cultural, and moral values upon which all civilization ultimately rests" (Hazlitt, The Free Man's Library, 119). Preceded by the first edition in English, published in New Haven the same year. Small bookseller ticket.

Book fine, dust jacket expertly restored with toning to spine. A most attractive copy.