Summary of Human Action

Author: Ludwig Von Mises
Pages: 218

This work is an abridgement of Human Action, a treatise on economics , the magnum opus by Ludwig von Mises, a central author of the "Austrian" school and one of the greatest thinkers on economics. Published in 1949, the original work is nearly a thousand pages long.

Although currently obscured by the mainstream Neoclassical, the Austrian tradition is faithful to the ideas that have prevailed since the origins of economic thinking until the beginning of the twentieth century. It embodies a realistic conception of the economic discipline that rejects the reductive model of homo economicus and the study of balances to focus on the processes of change and the causal relationships between events.

These ideas form a much more solid basis for the study of the market, money, economic crises, the enterprise and modern industrial structures than the neoclassical paradigm. They are gradually being rediscovered by economists and increasingly validated by the evolution of reality.

Human Action sets them out systematically in a language accessible to all, and also constitutes a particularly eloquent defense of freedom beyond its economic aspect. As such, this work should be part of the library of every “honest man.”