Friedrich August von Hayek was an economist and philosopher born in Austria. He is best known for his political economy/philosophy based defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism. In 1974, von Hayek received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (shared with Gunnar Myrdal) for his “pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and [his] penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.”

After having “converted” to liberalism, von Hayek began attending Ludwig von Mises’ somewhat exclusive private seminars, where also Fritz Machlup, Alfred Schutz, Felix Kaufmann,and Gottfried Haberler participated.

The Road to Serfdom was written between 1940–1943. The title was inspired by the French classical liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on the “road to servitude”. In it, von Hayek strongly opposes central planning, and also comes out moderately in favor of the free market system. However, he has much in common with modern institutionalists, and argues strongly for a large role for the central government than the minimalist state which Adam Smith favored.

Links to books by Friedrich von Hayek at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto (15 July 1848 – 19 August 1923), born Wilfried Fritz Pareto, is one of the most important classical social theorists ever. He was an Italian industrialist, sociologist, economist, and philosopher.

His contributions to economics are many, but the most important concern the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals’ choices. He was influential in moving economics from a kind of social philosophy to a data intensive field of scientific research and mathematical equations. The concept of Pareto efficiency is still alive. He also discovered that income follows a Pareto distribution.

His contributions to sociology were equally important. Compendium of General Sociology was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and the Compendium has been published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Society, to Pareto, was governed principally by non-rational forces, and he was critical of all rational explanations and ideologies. He contributed to the development of functionalist and systems theories of social and economic life and was a major influence on the work of Talcott Parsons. He was also an advocate of empirical and experimental methods in the social sciences as well as of mathematical sociology and economics.

It is sad to notice that some of Vilfredo Pareto’s important works are almost impossible to get hold of. This concerns, for example, his Mind and Society, where only part 2 is still available for a reasonable amount of money. The other parts are unfortunately very expensive.

Links to the works of Vilfredo Pareto at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

“Natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” are terms often associated with Charles Darwin. However, “survival of the fittest” was actually coined by philosopher Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin. To Spencer, evolution and selection were linked, and selection took place both in nature and in the human realm.

Spencer emphasized three developmental tendencies shared by societies and organisms: (1) growth in size, (2) increasing complexity of structure, and (3) differentiation of function.

Various schools in social theory (population ecology, functional analysis, and others) have embraced some of the principles of evolutionary biology. However, use of explanations of social change in terms of natural selection (or simply selection) has always been controversial in the social sciences. A major reason would seem to be that it is very difficult to explain and empirically show exactly how selection takes place.

Even so, there is little doubt that selection does play a prominent part in social change, and that thinking in terms of selection and selection processes is valuable as a corrective to thinking that seeks to explain everything in terms of rational agency. The Principles of Sociology is a book that belongs in any library of social classics and still deserves to be read.

Links to books by Herbert Spencer at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Georg Simmel, a contemporary of Max Weber, to my mind is a very underrated classical sociologist. In this very remarkable book Simmel discusses money from several angles. It was published in 1900, and is Georg Simmel’s magnum opus. It contains some of the key ideas of Simmel. The Philosophy of Money may be viewed as providing an alternative interpretation to that of Marx in Das Kapital, and discusses money from economic, philosophical, sociological and psychological perspectives in order to use this key phenomenon to develop a comprehensive sociological analysis.

Simmel sees money as an important medium in the creation of social ties. Through money, relationships between people are established and given content and form. At the same time, the money aspect of social ties provides a basis for intellectualization processes and the disintegration of substance into impersonal ties. Tendencies to calculation and numerical analyses, as well as money’s tendency to become an end in itself, give money based relationships a set of extremely dynamic properties.

The Philosophy of Money is a good book to start with for readers wanting to take a closer look at this original and important social theorist.

Links to books by Georg Simmel at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Human Capital is Becker’s classic study of how investment in an individual’s education and training is similar to business investments in equipment. Becker’s research was fundamental in arguing for the augmentability of human capital – as something that one could invest in, that was associated with a certain rate of return, and so forth.

Gary S. Becker is a pioneer of applying economic analysis to human behavior in such areas as discrimination, marriage, family relations, and education. At the time when it was published (in 1964), Becker’s arguments were controversial. Many considered his line of argument as dehumanizing and debasing. However, Human Capital is today considered as one of the major works in labor economics as well as in the sociology of work and labor.

The most recent edition of Human Capital includes several chapters not included in the original – covering recent ideas about human capital, fertility and economic growth, the division of labor, economic considerations within the family, and inequality in earnings.

Gary S. Becker was recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economic Science.

Links to books by Gary S. Becker at amazon US and amazon UK.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Alfred Schutz attempts to provide a sound philosophical basis for a phenomenological interpretation of the sociological theories of Max Weber, most notably the parts concerned with social action. Schutz draws on Husserlian phenomenology, and provides a very original and thorough analysis of human action. His analysis concerns the goals and meanings of social action, human agents’ interpretation of social action, and – more generally – how to provide an understanding of action as interpreted in social contexts by conscious actors that are goal oriented.

This is a masterpiece of social philosophy, and provides an important bridge between classical sociology and phenomenological philosophy. Personally, I view it as one of the best scholarly treaties on this issue I have ever read – it is also excellently written. It is very rigorous, and raises a number of excellent and important questions.

Links to books by Alfred Schutz at amazon US and at amazon UK.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

This study by one of the founding fathers of scoiology, Max Weber, is clearly written in opposition to Karl Marx (even thought Weber does not do Marx the honor of refering to him) and the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism, with its insistence that social change takes place through the conflict of opposites. Instead, Weber relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately encouraged capitalism.

Weber discovered that in Germany, Protestants tended to be wealthier and better educated than Catholics because Protestants showed a special tendency to develop “economic rationalism”; that is, a particular approach to creating wealth that was less focused on the gain of comfort than on the pursuit of profit itself. The general outlook on life and work that the early protestants sects drew from their belief made them singularly well adapted to modern capitalism, according to Weber.

Links to books by Max Weber at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Adam Smith uses historical examples and analytical thinking in this wonderful book which more than any laid the foundations of modern economics.

He viewed labor as the source of value, explored the need for specialization of labor and the emergence of markets for labor. He introduced the assumption underlying modern rational theorizing that each individual pursues their best interests.

The concepts of marginal utility and scarcity are foreshadowed in his work. Hw showed how, under ideal circumstances, supply and demand meet to clear markets. He discussed that macro consequences of competition where each actor was motivated by his own best interests, and showed that it could lead to better conditions for all, as if by an “invisible hand.”.

He also emphasized the importance of government in providing international and domestic security as well as providing public works and institutions such as education (the minimalist state).

This is still a great and important introduction to modern economics.

The Bantam paperback version contains Smith’s complete and unabridged final version of the Wealth of Nations. It also provides footnotes on Smith’s wording, the historical context, and the differences between Smith’s 5th edition and previous editions.

PS: Theory of Moral Sentiments is the work which Smith himself considered his most important work.

“Adam Smith’s enormous authority resides, in the end, in the same property that we discover in Marx: not in any ideology, but in an effort to see to the bottom of things” –Robert L. Heilbroner

Links to books by Adam Smith at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

David Ricardo (1772 – 1823) was an English political economist. He wrote his principles as a reaction to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and after having been encouraged by James Mill and his son John. At several points he was fairly critical of Adam Smith.

Ricardo has often been credited with systematizing economics, and surely has been one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith. His writings also influenced Karl Marx.

Ricardo was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator, who amassed a considerable personal fortune.

Ricardo is perhaps most remembered for his contribution to the theory of comparative advantage. This theory, which he partly borrowed (from Robert Torrens), provides a fundamental argument in favor of free trade between countries and of specialization among individuals. Ricardo showed that, under a given set of assumptions, there is mutual benefit from exchange even if one party is more productive in every possible area than its trading counterpart as long as each concentrates on the activities where it has a relative productivity advantage. This important conclusion is also often referred to in discussion of international trade.

Links to books by David Ricardo at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.

Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of sociology, published The Division of Labor in Society in 1892. It was his doctoral dissertation, and it contains fundamental and far ranging statements about the nature of human society, it’s development, and what binds individuals to one another and to society. For Durkheim, the social division of labor is not only an economic arrangement, reflecting the level of technological and societal advancement, but also something which gives rise to forms of morality and solidarity.

Emile Durkheim developed the social theory of Auguste Comte further towards an academic field. He was a structural functionalist.

This is a very important contribution to classic social theory and to sociology. It is also an early conceptualization of structural functionalist theorizing.

Links to books by Emile Durkheim at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

©2010 Social Theory Classics. All Rights Reserved.