Based on the original 1962 edition, previously titled The Free And Prosperous Commonwealth: An Exposition Of The Ideas Of Classical Liberalism. Liberalism is an influential book containing economic analysis and an indicting critique of socialism. Starting from the principle of private property, Mises shows how the other classical liberal freedoms follow from property rights and argues that liberalism free of government intervention is required to promote peace, social harmony and the general welfare.

This book was translated into English by a student of Mises, Ralph Raico, whose English edition in 1962 was titled The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth rather than Liberalism, as Mises thought that the term liberalism after the New Deal and especially in the 1960s became widely used in the United States to refer to the leftist ideology supporting degrees of government intervention, in opposition to Mises' central premise.