Private property & individual rights
The institutional foundation that makes long-range production, exchange, and economic calculation possible.
The Jefferson School presents
Capitalism A Treatise on Economics
George Reisman's landmark synthesis of classical and Austrian economics—and a rigorous case for economic freedom, human progress, and laissez-faire capitalism.
Full text available free
Written for students and scholars
By George Reisman
1,046Pages
20Chapters
3Major parts
FreeComplete PDF
A lifetime companion.Conservative Book Club
The definitive work
An integrated theory of economic life.
“The clearest and most comprehensive contemporary defense of the capitalist economic system available.”
Written for the intelligent general reader and the professional economist alike, Capitalism brings together the Austrian school's focus on individual action with enduring insights from the British classical economists.
Across twenty chapters, Reisman examines production, prices, wages, profit, saving, money, competition, monopoly, socialism, inflation, and the political foundations of a free society.
A framework for understanding
The ideas at the center.
A systematic exploration of how freedom, production, prices, saving, and individual rights work together in a division-of-labor society.
The division of labor
How specialization and voluntary exchange expand human productivity and mutual dependence.
Prices & coordination
Why free prices carry knowledge, balance supply and demand, and direct resources toward valued uses.
Profit, saving & capital
The role of productive investment in rising output, technological progress, and higher real wages.
Competition & progress
Freedom of entry as a process of discovery, improvement, and expanding choice—not a fixed market structure.
Money, inflation & gold
A monetary analysis connecting credit, spending, purchasing power, and the recurring business cycle.
“Reisman's exposure of modern mercantilist fallacies takes its place alongside that of Adam Smith.”James M. Buchanan · Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1986
Inside the treatise
A complete system, built step by step.
The book moves from first principles to the institutions of a market economy, then to the forces that drive economic progress.
Part one
The Foundations of Economics
Economics & capitalismWealthNatural resources
Part two
The Division of Labor and Capitalism
ProductionThe price systemPrice controlsSocialismCompetitionProductive activity
Part three
The Process of Economic Progress
Money & spendingWagesSavingProfit & interestKeynesianismGold & inflation
Conclusion
Toward Laissez-Faire Capitalism
A long-range political-economic programBibliographyIndex
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