History of the Austrian School of Economics

However one may turn the matter, one cannot discover any reason why an ideological distortion of truth should be more useful to the bourgeoisie than a correct theory.

Despite the claims of the chartalists and modern monetary theory advocates, early American monetary history tells a much different story. In fact, much of the historical evidence illustrates Menger’s theory.

In this week’s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews Joseph Salerno’s Money, Sound and Unsound, and still finds it golden.

A tribute to the late Roger W. Garrison (1944–2026) was delivered at the opening reception of the Austrian Economics Research Conference (AERC) in Auburn, Alabama on March 19, 2026.

Despite the claims of the chartalists, early American monetary history tells a much different story than one falsely claiming state-issued fiat money undergirded the colonial economy. In fact, much of the historical evidence illustrates Menger’s monetary theory.

The real founders of economic science actually wrote hundreds of years before Adam Smith. 

A century after Ludwig von Mises exposed the fundamental weakness in the socialist economy, Jesús Huerta de Soto demonstrates why Mises was right and his detractors were wrong. In Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon explains why Huerta de Soto is right.

While Adam Smith has played an important historical role in the development of economic thought, as Murray Rothbard pointed out, he hardly is the original apostle of laissez-faire economics.

Mainstream economics has deliberately abandoned the history of economic thought. Austrian economists must keep teaching and re-teaching the great debates of the past.

Jesús Huerta de Soto traces the Austrian school's intellectual roots from the Spanish scholastics to Rothbard, making the case that anarcho-capitalism is the natural endpoint of the classical liberal tradition.