Liberalismus, Socialismus und christliche Gesellschaftsordnug/Liberalism, Socialism and Christian Social Order Book 1: The Philosophical Roots of Economic Liberalism

In Die philosophischen Grundlagen des ökonomischen Liberalismus (1899), Pesch addressed the revival of liberal economics, that is, the free-market, deregulation and a laissez-faire economic philosophy. Pesch traced what he considered its flawed roots in Enlightenment philosophy. He moved it forward to a more progressive thought that utilized the natural law operating ineluctably in economics. This work appears especially relevant in terms of the recent and ongoing revival of liberal economics. Pesch traced it what he perceived as its flawed roots in Enlightenment philosophy, and carried it forward to evolutionist thinking, and to subsequent efforts to see ‘natural laws’ operating ineluctably in economics as in the physical sciences.

Mellen Press is honored to publish, in this multi-volume set, the first English translations of the works of Heinrich Pesch, SJ (1854-1926). A Jesuit economist who developed many of the basic economic and social principles (notably the Principle of Solidarism) that emerged from the social encyclicals of the Catholic Church beginning in 1931 with Pope Pius XI and further developed by Pope John Paul II.