As we know from much historical evidence, economic science does not always move forward with better responses to the same questions; it also changes some questions and forgets others. Questions central to the classical era of economics (whether political or civil) regarding income distribution, the nature of profit, the role of rent were progressively abandoned by the neoclassical revolution at the end of the nineteenth century. For example, what we today call “income distribution” is quite different from its meaning in the classical era, and we simply no longer talk about the origin of value and profit.

The Italian political economist, Achille Loria (1857–1943), the brother of the well-known mathematician Gino Loria, was a witness to the great methodological revolution in economic science at the end of the nineteenth century, and bitterly opposed its tendency to abandon themes that he considered central even in the new economics. Loria’s scientific and human programme in particular originated in response to this conflict, and in an era such as ours, of environmental and financial crisis, his criticisms of economic science are relevant and worth reconsidering today.

The centrality in Loria’s work of the problem of rents – his central criticism of capitalism – make him an author that, to be understood correctly, should be considered within the civil economy tradition. Loria’s scientific misfortune, in relation to his talent, was a consequence of his anachronism: he was born too late with respect to the classical paradigm and too early for today’s. The first few decades of the twentieth century marked the eclipse of his themes by mainstream economics, not just on rents and income distribution, but also on land and his analysis of politics and institutions, themes which are now once again on the agenda in these crisis times. We find in Loria’s work a theoretical and methodological apparatus that anticipated many of the topics at the centre of current economics, such as the economic analysis of law, institutions, political choices, as well as hints of theories of public goods, the commons, energy and land.