Theory and History.

First UK edition. 8vo. ix, [1], 384 pp. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in gilt on black ground, dust jacket (Foyles bookseller label to front pastedown, otherwise internally clean and unmarked; jacket price clipped with later publisher's price sticker to front turn-in fold, heavily edge worn with substantial loss to head of spine panel continuing to upper portion of rear panel, closed tear to foot of rear joint, a good copy only). London, Jonathan Cape.

A major work by the Austrian libertarian philosopher and economist Ludwig von Mises, originally published in America the previous year.

Theory and History is "a sweeping epistemological vindication of the case for liberty and capitalism. Mises argued that the only scientific interpretation of social reality was based on economics and history, and that the conclusions of both these disciplines led to the more speculative of utilitarian philosophy as he understood it. He showed the major alternative approaches - Marxism, positivism, and historicism - despite their pretension to science, were untenable on epistemological grounds" (Hulsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, pp. 949-50).

Stock Code: 251597