The Whig Theory of History as developed in the 19th century still dominates textbooks today. The Whigs say that history is an inevitable march upward, always improving. The idea is that knowledge is never lost, instead knowledge continues building and adding. This has not been true for history, science, or economics. Contrary to the accepted history of economics, Adam Smith did not create all of modern economic thought in 1776. He was predated (and bettered) by the Spanish Scholastics. Murray Rothbard exposes the Whig Theory and its implications for us today.

The first in a series of six lectures on the History of Economic Thought.