I'm currently translating Swedish economist Eli F. Heckscher's book Gammal och Ny Ekonomisk Liberalism, from 1921. The Swedish publisher I work with from time to time—Svensk Tidskrift—released an updated version of the book (with extra commentary etc) a few years ago, and it received some good feedback among Swedish academics and economists.
Outside of the Swedish navel-gazing economist bubble, Heckscher is only known by name for the economic theory that he and his colleague at Stockholm School of Economics, Bertil Ohlin, developed in the mid-20th century (Heckscher-Ohlin trade model) and that awarded Ohlin the Nobel Prize in 1977—Heckscher himself died before the prize was instigated (and no posthumous awards).
While the book is primarily about liberalism ("old and new"), and what constitutes a liberal worldview or how gov vs private sector ought to be constituted, there are a few segments on monetary thought in there.
Since he's commenting from the point of view of 1921, it gives Bitcoiners obsessed with WTF Happened in 1971 pause. Still, this bit is fucking unbelievably elegant (trust me, it's not my translation magic making it read so well):
It was on the basis of these—and countless similar experiences—that economic liberalism, with characteristic simplicity and frankness, set out to create a monetary system which, though very far from perfect, nevertheless made such abuses impossible for as long as it was maintained. The medium was, more or less, synonymous with the gold standard; and to it was added a system of banknote issue (mainly the English), the central task of which was to guarantee the stability of the value of money to the exclusion of almost all other considerations.
Josh Hendrickson, a mainstream economist I much respect, touches on similar things in his historical research (#854062): the extreme commitment to the value of (gold) money is, largely, what made the English so much better and stronger than their counterparts in the 19th century.
The generation that lived before the First World War was under the protective umbrella of the gold standard and absorbed its benefits with no more thought for them than for the importance of air and light. It is now almost tragicomical to go back to the pre-war figures of monetary fluctuations when the value of money fell by perhaps 1-2% a year; now that we have left the gold standard, it is an unusual and an as-yet unattainable stability to reach fluctuations as small as 1-2% a month. In the central economic sphere, we have simply been returned to the chaos that ruled before liberalism, and we will not escape it until we strive with the same simplicity and determination as the liberal statesmen did in building up what has been torn down.
I love that bit.
It's a good warning, too, that once bitcoin wins we also have to keep the values that brought us there. Without frequent real-world reminders, even the strongest and most adequate monetary system in history can fall apart.