Histoire Critique des Théories de l'Intérêt du Capital.

First edition in French of Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzins-Theorien (1884, this taken from the second German edition of 1900), "an exhaustive survey of the alternative treatments of the phenomenon of interest: use theories, productivity theories, abstinence theories, and many more. Most significant in this early work is his devastating critique of the exploitation theory, as embraced by Karl Marx and his forerunners: capitalists do not exploit workers; rather, they accommodate workers by providing them with income well in advance of the revenue from the output they helped to produce" (Roger W. Garrison, in Randall G. Holcombe, The Great Austrian Economists, p. 114). Mises described Capital and Interest, the magnum opus of which this was the first part, as "the most eminent contribution to modern economic theory" (ibid., p. 114).