Human Action

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics is widely considered the magnum opus of Ludwig von Mises, one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century and a foundational figure of the Austrian school of economics. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1949, this comprehensive work represents Mises’s attempt to build a complete science of economics from first principles.

Mises did not simply describe economic phenomena — prices, wages, interest rates, money, monopoly, and even the trade cycle — he explained them as the outcomes of countless conscious, purposive actions, choices, and preferences of individuals. His methodology, which he called praxeology (the science of human action), grounds all of economics in the fundamental fact that humans act purposefully to improve their conditions.

The book covers an extraordinary range of topics: the epistemology of economics, value theory, prices and production, money and credit, the trade cycle, socialism, interventionism, and the philosophical foundations of a free society. It remains the most comprehensive defense of the free market and critique of socialism and interventionism ever written from the Austrian perspective. Mises’s work profoundly influenced later economists including Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Israel Kirzner.