Long before the invisible hand waved through markets, before supply and demand curves danced on chalkboards, before economists wore the badge of science — there were questions.
How should wealth be distributed? What is a fair price? Can interest ever be just? What is the role of the state in provisioning life? These were not problems for specialists. They were matters of justice, theology, power, and philosophy — asked by prophets, poets, rulers, and saints.
In The Wealth of Ideas, Alessandro Roncaglia returns to this forgotten terrain — the prehistory of political economy — not as an antiquarian, but as a cartographer. He shows that the roots of economic thinking stretch back into the deepest soils of human thought, long before “economics” became a discipline. And in doing so, he invites us to remember: the questions we now dress in mathematics were once draped in morality, conflict, and awe.
Before the Market, the Polis
The term political economy carries within it two worlds: the polis, the city-state — society; and oikonomia, the management of the household — provisioning. Together, they remind us that the economic has always been social, that questions of production and distribution cannot be divorced from questions of power, structure, and meaning.
But before even this term cohered, thinkers were already grappling with economic life.
In ancient Greece, Xenophon gave us the earliest use of the word oikonomikos. Plato, in The Republic, imagined an ideal city founded on specialization and communal living. Aristotle, more cautiously, distinguished between natural and unnatural acquisition — between meeting needs and the endless pursuit of wealth. For him, economy was a branch of ethics.
Even here, in these early fragments, we see the outlines of questions we still wrestle with:
What is value?
What is enough?
What happens when money becomes the goal, rather than the means?
The Theologians’ Ledger
As Rome declined and Christianity rose, economic life was seen through the prism of sin and salvation. The early Church Fathers, and later the Scholastics, did not ignore commerce — they moralized it.
Thomas Aquinas built upon Aristotle to develop the theory of the just price — a price not set by markets alone, but by justice, necessity, and community well-being. Usury — charging interest on loans — was condemned as unnatural, a sin against time itself. Money was to serve life, not rule it.
From today’s perspective, these concerns may seem archaic. But they touch something enduring: a suspicion of abstraction, a fear that economic calculation might one day override moral judgment.
And perhaps that day has come.
Merchants, Metals, and the Rise of Mercantilism
As the medieval world gave way to early modern Europe, commerce burst through cathedrals. Trade routes expanded. Cities flourished. Gold and silver flowed — and with them, a new anxiety: wealth as accumulation, power through surplus.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, a new set of thinkers emerged — mercantilists, though not always by that name. They wrote in the language of bullion, trade balances, and national strength. Thinkers like Thomas Mun in England, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert in France, began to envision the economy as a system — not just of ethics, but of flows.
Wealth became measurable. Policy became instrumental. The state became economic actor.
Still, this was not yet economics. These were fragments, reflections, aspirations. But the terrain was shifting.
Antonio Serra and the Italian Spark
In 1613, a Neapolitan thinker named Antonio Serra wrote a small, sharp text: A Short Treatise on the Causes that Can Make Gold and Silver Plentiful in Kingdoms that Have No Mines. Here, we see a crucial step: the recognition that wealth does not reside in metals alone, but in productive structure. That industry, not just extraction or conquest, can enrich a nation.
It was a subtle but seismic insight — a glimpse of what would later become the focus of political economy: the dynamics of production, labor, trade, and policy.
Serra’s voice was nearly lost to history. But Roncaglia revives it — and in doing so, he reminds us that the story of economic thought is not always told by the victors. Some ideas had to wait centuries to be heard.
Why This Prehistory Matters
Today, the prehistory of political economy is often passed over in silence — a kind of prologue, dutifully acknowledged and quickly left behind. But that silence is dangerous.
Because in these early reflections, we find what modern economics too often forgets:
- That markets are not natural laws but human constructs.
- That wealth is not always good, and poverty not always failure.
- That the economy is embedded in culture, faith, and fear.
- That justice cannot be abstracted away.
These voices — from Aristotle to Aquinas, from the Scholastics to Serra — remind us that economic life is always moral life. That every system reflects not just efficiency but belief.
Before We Were Economists
Before we were economists, we were citizens. Before we measured GDP, we asked what a good life meant. Before we theorized the market, we lived in households, bartered in villages, gave and received in communities.
The prehistory of political economy is not an old book on a dusty shelf. It is a mirror — showing us what we have inherited, and what we may have lost.
And in a time when economics risks becoming a language for insiders alone, perhaps it is time to return to those early, expansive questions.
Not to dwell in the past — but to find again what we’ve been missing.
Because before there were theories, there were values.
Before there were models, there were meanings.
And before economics had a name, it had a purpose:
To serve life. To guide the polis. To ask what is just.