Economic Thought in Ancient Greece

Jesús Huerta de Soto writes: The intellectual odyssey that laid the foundations for Western civilization began in classical Greece. Unfortunately, Greek thinkers failed in their attempt to grasp the essential principles of the spontaneous market order and of the dynamic process of social cooperation which surrounded them. While we must acknowledge the important Greek contributions in the areas of epistemology, logic, ethics, and even the conception of natural law, the Greeks failed miserably to see the need for the development of a discipline, economic science, devoted to the study of the spontaneous processes of social cooperation that comprise the market.

What is even worse is that when the first intellectuals emerged, so did the symbiosis and complicity between thinkers and rulers. From the beginning, the great majority of intellectuals embraced statism and systematically undervalued and even criticized and denigrated the society of trade, commerce, and crafts that flourished around them.

It may be too much to ask that, from the very dawn of philosophical and scientific knowledge, the Greeks would comprehend even the basics of political economy, a discipline that is still among the youngest of all the sciences and seeks to study a reality as abstract and difficult to understand as the spontaneous market order. However, it is worth noting that the Greek philosophers, like today's intellectuals, could not avoid the scientistic conceit of believing themselves qualified to impose their own points of view on their fellow citizens via systematic government coercion. History repeats itself over and over, and even today we have progressed very little in this sense.

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A Brief Note on Taoism.

Lastly, it is very interesting to note that, during the same era when classical Greek thought was being forged (from the 6th to the 4th century BC), ancient China saw the beginnings of three great currents of thought: that of the so-called "Legalists" (who supported the centralized state), that of the Confucianists (who tolerated it), and that of the Taoists, of a much more liberal bent and extremely interesting for historians of economic thought. Chuang Tzu (369–286 BC) goes as far as to say that "good order results spontaneously when things are let alone." In his criticism of the interventionism of rulers, he describes them as "robbers." Also, according to Rothbard, Chuang Tzu was the first anarchist thinker in history. In fact, Chuang Tzu wrote that the world "does simply not need governing; in fact it should not be governed at all."

Chuang Tzu adhered to the individualistic, liberal views of Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism, and took them to their most logical conclusions. In Confucius's day (from the 6th to the 5th century BC), Lao Tzu concluded that government oppressed the individual and was always "more to be feared than fierce tigers."

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