Juan de Mariana, S. J.

[arisbe]

The father of Austrian economics?

So says this interesting essay by Jesus Huerta de Soto, posted today at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

In many, many ways the Austrian school continues the work of the Iberian Neoscholastics:

"In summary, Father Mariana and the Spanish scholastics were capable of developing the essential elements of what would later be the theoretical basis of the Austrian School of economics, specifically the following: first, the subjective theory of value (Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva); second, the proper relationship between prices and costs (Luis Saravia de la Calle); third, the dynamic nature of the market and the impossibility of the model of equilibrium (Juan de Lugo and Juan de Salas); fourth, the dynamic concept of competition understood as a process of rivalry among sellers (Castillo de Bovadilla and Luis de Molina); fifth, the rediscovery of the time-preference principle (Martin Azpilcueta Navarro); sixth, the distorting influence of the inflationary growth of money on prices (Juan de Mariana, Diego de Covarrubias, and Martin Azpilcueta Navarro); seventh, the negative economic effects of fractional-reserve banking (Luis Saravia de la Calle and Martin Azpilcueta Navarro); eighth, that bank deposits form part of the monetary supply (Luis de Molina and Juan de Lugo); ninth, the impossibility of organizing society by coercive commands, due to lack of information (Juan de Mariana); and tenth, the libertarian tradition that any unjustified intervention on the market by the state violates natural law (Juan de Mariana)."

These same early modern thinkers are also said to have had considerable influence on the founders of the American republic through the understanding of the law of nature and of nations which they articulated for all time -- or at least until very, very recently. I would like to see more documentation of this claim, but it might go some way toward accounting for the fact that economists of the school of Menger are among the ablest defenders of the Constitutional system of politics.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

To what extent do you suppose Juan de Mariana's thinking was a reaction to what he observed in the economic dynamics between Spain and her New World colonies? This issue is touched on briefly in the essay, but I suspect that ideas from any schools of thought in Europe opposed to imperial exploitation of the colonies must have made their way across the Atlantic... which leads me to speculate that perhaps these ideas were even more influential on the nation's founders than might have otherwise been supposed.