Preface to The Influence and Significance of Human Action After 75 Years

Human Action is more than a book about economics broadly construed. It is a guide to civilized social life which elucidates the laws of reality that apply if human persons are to engage in peaceful and prosperous social cooperation under the division of labor. For Mises, unlike most economists, economics is not merely an “analytical toolbox” for grading alternative economic policies or economic systems as more or less practical or efficient. Rather, economics is a body of substantive truths about the institutional foundations of human society. Thus, what is at stake in formulating a well-founded and coherent structure of economic theory is not an incremental change in GDP or ‘social welfare’ but the fate of humanity.