The History of Economic Ideas and the Political Philosophy - Research Paper Example

According to Richard Elmore (2002), “internal accountability [or responsibility]…is a precondition for any process of improvement” (p. 20). Therefore an endeavor has been made to highlight the main points of a different school of thoughts that have a journey of economics from 16th to 20th centuries. Beside the special emphasis on the historical aspects, this research is also some sort of tribute to great economists like Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Mun, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, and John Maynard Keynes etc that had put their brains and abilities for the betterment of society.

 Classical political economy is referred to as the first modern school of economic thought which is developed mainly by Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, and David Ricardo etc. The book Wealth of Nations written by Adam Smith in 1776 is considered as the beginning of classical economics era. The school of classical economics was at its peak during the mid 19th century. Karl Marx was the first one who referred the work of Ricardo and James Mill and their antecedents as a school of classical economics (Keynes, 1936).

  Adam Smith was born in 1723 and is still considered as the father of modern political economics. Smith’s father was Scottish Judge Advocate and Comptroller of Customs. He graduated from the Glasgow and Oxford universities and became professor first of logic and then of moral philosophy at Glasgow. At the retirement, he received a substantial pension which enabled him to devote himself entirely to his writing. In order to summarize Smith’s work in a few pages, it is necessary to divide it in some way.

 It seems best to distinguish two aspects, having due regard to their interrelation. These are: (a) the fundamental political and social philosophy and the principles of economic policy which are consequent from them; and (b) the technical economic content.