"Walter Eltis's account of the theories of economic growth and income distribution of Francois Quesnay, Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo and Karl Marx is reprinted here with a substantial new introduction which sets their work in a broader context. He re-states their individual contributions rigorously with extensive references to the original texts. He shows how each developed the work of his predecessors to produce a coherent and distinctive classical theory of growth.".

"These accounts are complete in themselves. In combination they also offer a general statement of the classical theory of economic growth. In this, only part of the economy creates an investable surplus over costs, and growth depends on the reinvestment of a sufficient fraction of that surplus. Decline is inevitable if luxury consumption or unproductive government expenditure exceeds the surplus that the productive sector generates.".

"The book includes clear and comprehensible accounts of Quesnay's Tableau economique, Smith's theory of capital accumulation and growth, and Malthus's theories of population and effective demand. It continues with Ricardo's theory of income distribution and Marx's theory of exploitation and his account of how a declining rate of profit will lead to the eventual collapse of capitalism."--BOOK JACKET.