Origins of Economic Thought and Justice (Book)

Complete with extensive bibliography, this copiously annotated study probes the roots of contemporary economic thought, focusing on the interaction be-tween economic and ethical thought and on conditions responsible for the emer-gence of orderly economic systems. Spengler examines the basis of eco-nomic thought among the ancients, then looks specifically at Mesopotamia, India, China, and Greece. His final chapter is a historical consideration of political economy and ethics from Aris-totle to the present. In Mesopotamia, the system of weights and measures and regulatory codes reinforced customary practice. In India the economy was regulated by the state, but China, except for a few laws regulating consumption, remained eco-nomically free. The Greeks, with a theory of natural order, contributed the idea of economic justice; only Greece freed itself from mythopoetic elements domi-nant in earlier economic thought.