Yet despite…accommodations with commerce, Möser regarded the market as primarily a threat–to the artisanal citizens of the town, to the traditional wants of the peasantry, and to the political structure to society, since it created...

Most people in the Great Britain of (Adam) Smith’s day lived in what most of us would regard as poverty. Hundreds of thousands were willing to risk the possibility of death in transit and years...

Burke’s admonition–“The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations”–never seems to have occurred to...

…capitalism is too important and complex a subject to be left to economists. Achieving a critical comprehension of it requires perspectives beyond those characteristic of modern economics. That is why this is a history not...

Central to Möser’s view of the human world was “honor,” a notion that was as important to corporatist society as the notion of dignity would be for the more individualistic society that succeeded it. In...