Introduction

The following selected essays explore aspects of the history of mainstream economics, or, as I prefer to call it, for reasons to be made clear, political economy. The study of the history of economic thought has at least one characteristic in common with the economy per se, namely, scarcity. Scarcity is one of the — perhaps the very most important — foundation concepts of economics, and one of its implications is the idea of opportunity cost. Scarcity necessitates choice and the inexorable incurrence of foregone alternatives. The connections between scarcity and opportunity cost are complex but include the following chain: scarcity implies choice, which implies conflict over the choices to be made, the bases of choice, and the nature of the choosing process and its structure. Choices, and corresponding opportunity costs, are therefore specific to the structure of the choosing process. Choices and costs are necessarily political, meaning by political having to do with the exercise of power.