The Liberty Archive Free Capitalists

Lecture 5 of 16 · Austrian Theory

What is your view of the English classic school of economics?

Murray N. Rothbard · 1:25 · Recorded 13 July 2009

What is your view of the English classic school of economics? by Murray N. Rothbard is a free audio lecture (1:25) at freecapitalists.org, recorded 13 July 2009, part of the 16-lecture series Austrian Theory.

Full text

Transcript

221 words · 1 minute to read

0:00The English Classical School, and my vision, as Shrimp had to recall, my vision of the history of economic thought, is that the English Classical School was the great detour, the great diversion from the mainline scholastic French tradition. The scholastic French tradition was a classic Basque French tradition, continental tradition was a subject and value theory. It was basically what I call pre-Austrian. I realize it's anachronistic to say it, but that's really what it was. With Adam Smith and Smith and McCarter, we have a tremendous shift toward a new kind of theory. A theory that still plagues us, of course, to the present day, namely that the real determinant of the value of prices, values and prices of goods, is not consumer subjective utility, but objective labor pain, labor toil, whatever you want to call it, and of course the production, which of course would be down to labored toil, and this was established, basically Smith and Mercado, and it then fell out of favor in England, and was restored by John Stuart Mill, a tremendous act of filial pietism, paying his great debt to his father, and by sheer intellectual bravura, and the fact that he had tremendous stature in England at that time, won the day again.

1:21to its unfortunate place in the history of thought.

Part of a series

Austrian Theory

16 lectures, 0.2 hours, recorded 2009. See the full series or subscribe by RSS.

Speakers: Murray N. Rothbard.

Recording date and topics for this lecture come from the Mises Institute's page for What is your view of the English classic school of economics?, checked 2026-07-23.

Questions

About this lecture

Can I listen to What is your view of the English classic school of economics? free?
Yes. It plays as audio in the browser on this page, and downloads free with no signup.
How long is What is your view of the English classic school of economics??
The recording runs 1:25.
Who gave the lecture What is your view of the English classic school of economics??
Murray N. Rothbard delivered it, in the series Austrian Theory.
When was What is your view of the English classic school of economics? recorded?
It was recorded 13 July 2009.
What series is What is your view of the English classic school of economics? part of?
It is lecture 5 of 16 in Austrian Theory, which is free to stream or download in full.