Readers are offered a book by the famous Russian historian and economist V.V. Svyatlovsky (1869-1927), dedicated to the history of economic ideas related to economic life and the social structure of the time in which they arose and developed. From this point of view, the author considers the origin of the money economy, the history of the industrial revolution, trade, industrial and financial capital and the ideological trends associated with them - mercantilism, physiocracy, the classical school of Adam Smith, the "Austrian" school, as well as scientific socialism.