Abstract
Ludwig von Mises’s social rationalist views on society, first discussed in
Salerno (1990), do not appear to have any precursors in the history of economic thought.
The present paper highlights the contributions of a French philosopher, A.L.C. Destutt de
Tracy, to the theory of social development as one precursor of Mises’s theory. I use
extensive textual evidence to highlight the important similarities between the social
theories presented in De Tracy’s Treatise on Political Economy and Mises’s Human
Action. The systematic exposition of these social rationalist views focuses on three
aspects: their praxeological foundation, the economic factors which bring about human
association, and the global consequences of these social phenomena.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 436-455 |
| Journal | The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Bibliographical note
This article is available under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ )Keywords
- social theory
- rationalism
- human action
- division of labor
- Ludwig von Mises
- Destutt de Tracy
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Dorobăț, C. E. (2016). Division of Labor and Society: The Social Rationalism of Mises and Destutt de Tracy. The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 18(4), 436-455.