An Economics Lesson from Tolstoy

A reliance on mathematics and theory pushed economics toward the hard sciences.

Practitioners of economics have traditionally treated their subject as a physical science, void of the potential to account for the possibility of qualitative, human-influenced outcomes. Mainstream economic thought has informed discussions and policies that consider economic growth a necessity. This has led to increasing wealth imbalances among individuals and to oligopolistic and monopolistic levels of concentration among businesses.

The renowned Russian author of, among other classics, War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy was not an economist by trade. Yet his work offers a broad...