J anek W asserman . The Marginal Revolutionaries

In his new book The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas, Janek Wasserman examines the historical trajectory of the Austrian School of economics. The Austrian School is a group of economists originally from Vienna, which included, most famously, Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and is generally thought to have influenced, among others, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. According to Wasserman, we must understand the Austrian School because their ideas and institutions continue to “exert such symbolic power in today’s imagination” (4–5). In fact, he continues, “we must think the twentieth century through the Austrian School” (16). Wasserman argues, however, even among the school’s followers, there is much ignorance about their actual ideas. To counter this, he goes deep into the writings of these economists to show us their key ideas, their major debates, and how some ideas remained constant and some changed. The...

Austrian School · Economic history · Economics · Ignorance · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Power (physics) · Sociology · World War II · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law