History of Economic Analysis part 52 pdf

But then he tried to show by a numerical example how the competitive struggle leads to deadlock; and what his figures actually show is exactly the contrary—they display the mechanism by which the hitch will in general be avoided. In the chair at the Collège de France, 14 Say was succeeded by the Italian Rossi, Rossi by Chevalier, 15 whose tenure extended to 1879, and Chevalier, in turn, by his son-in-law, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, whose career covers practically the whole of the next period. This academic succession should be noticed because it was also a succession in spirit and doctrine. In the high heavens, Say’s true successor was indeed the great Walras. But on a less exalted level and as to ‘applied’ economics, attitudes in economic policy, systematic arrangement, and also as to the lower ranges of economic theory, these men (Rossi less than the other two) may be considered as followers of Say and as the core of a school which, if we date it from 1803, the year of the publication of Say’s Traité, boasts of a history of about a century. We shall consider it in the next Part. For the present, besides noting that interesting fact itself, we confine ourselves to the following comments. First, so far as nonsocialist economics is concerned, this group was not to meet significant opposition until the next period. During the period under discussion and a little beyond, it ruled supreme, controlling in particular the professional journals and institutions, and also the Société d’Économie Politique which was founded, like the Journal des économistes, in 1842. Second, the school and all its members were—partly, as has been mentioned before, owing to the presence until 1848 of a strong socialist menace to bourgeois society—strongly liberal in the laissez-faire sense and anti-étatistes. 16 This naturally accounts for the hostility of modern critics that also reflects upon Say himself, but it should be unnecessary to point out that their derogatory judgments are unhistorical. Third, the school had many members of admirable character, strong intelligence, and great experience in practical affairs. But, fourth, owing partly to the practical turn of their minds and their too exclusive concentration upon economic policy, they lacked interest in purely scientific questions and were in consequence almost wholly sterile as regards analytic achievement. Their very existence as a 14 The Collège de France is neither a college nor a graduate school in the American sense, though somewhat more like the latter than like the former. Appointment to a chair is an honor that spells recognition of the appointee’s leading position rather than an opportunity for inspiring and directing research. Lectures are addressed to a wide public and sometimes are (or were) frequented by le monde. 15 Michel Chevalier (1806–79) was undoubtedly one of the most eminent economists of that period—known to fame as the Chevalier of the Cobden-Chevalier commercial treaty between England and France (1860), which was followed by quasi-free-trade treaties between France and a number of other countries. His various activities. often in the service of, but never in subservience to, the French government produced a respectable quantity of valuable work of a factual nature and, occasionally, singularly infelicitous predictions such as that gold would fall in value (in 1859!) and that universal free trade would be realized before the century was out. That factual work may be illustrated by his Lettres sur l’Amérique du Nord (1836) and his Intérêts matériels en France (1836), models of their type. It is, however, to be expected that, for sheer lack of time, such a man cannot have contributed to the efficiency of the apparatus of analytic economics, and that a history of analytic economics has to mention him mainly for the purpose of explaining why that apparatus showed so little improvement for decades together. It was not that economists were incapable. Chevalier, e.g., was beyond doubt a very intelligent man whose work of factual analysis, were History of economic analysis 472 comparison admissible, many of us would place above that of the mere analyst. But all the energies of many of the able men who took to economics were absorbed by the immediately practical— invested in a process of production that may be likened to primitive hunting. Chevalier’s systematic work (Cours d’économie politique, 1st ed., 1842–4; a volume La Monnaie was added in 1850), the harvest of his lectures at the Collège de France that kept strictly on the surface of things, bears saddening witness to this—though, for the kind of performance it was, it merits admiration rather than contempt. 16 Some of its members, Chevalier included, experienced however a Saint-Simonist spell in their youth. group will appear to the modern radical as a bar to ‘progress.’ From a quite different standpoint and in a different sense, it likewise appears so to us. But a few more names must be mentioned in further illustration. First, I shall mention two who stand out from the rest and illustrate the virtues of the school at its best, though they also illustrate its weaknesses, Dunoyer (1786–1863) and Courcelle-Seneuil. 17 Next we notice J.A.Blanqui and Joseph Garnier, meritorious workers 18 who met with success in their own day as well 17 Admirable men both of them, who always stood uncompromisingly for what they considered the right course for their nation to take! But in spite of all the genuine brilliance—coupled with strong sense—that we find in Charles Dunoyer’s De la Liberté du travail (1845), we cannot rank it as a scientific performance. Socialists will agree with us on the ground that his every sentence was ideologically conditioned and served some ‘apologetic’ purpose. But it is not this which motivates our own judgment. If it were, we should have to exclude practically all socialist writings that are not less ideologically conditioned. The book adds nothing either to our knowedge or to our control over facts. The case of J.G.Courcelle-Seneuil (1813–92) is different. His Traité théorique et pratique d’économie politique (1858); Traité…des entreprises industrielles, commerciales, et agricoles (1855); Traité…des opérations de banque (1853), to mention only a few of the literary fruits of a busy life, were models of their kind and have served as such. Even if one does not attach much importance either to his rudimentary graphs or to certain unsuccessful terminological innovations of his (theory—plutology; applied economics—ergonomy), there is in his works that clear grasp of economic affairs that comes from firsthand experience and that one misses so much in the modern literature. At the same time, I do not think that it is possible to say more for him than this. His work illustrates our old truth that it is one thing to be a good economist and quite another to be a theorist. 18 J.A.Blanqui (1798–1854), the brother of the revolutionist of the ‘putschist’ type, L.A.Blanqui, was also an academic successor of Say, viz. at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. He is chiefly known for his Histoire de l’économie politique en Europe (1837), an interesting compilation that enjoyed international success because of its indubitable usefulness. Much more important was his Résumé de l’histoire du commerce et de l’industrie (1826), a judicious abstract that seems to me to be very well done (considering its date and the resources on which such an undertaking could then draw) and his researches into labor economics. Joseph Garnier, 1813–81 (not the Comte Germain Garnier, who is chiefly known as the translator of the Wealth of Nations, 1802, and as a late physiocrat and need not detain us further), was a pupil and close associate of Blanqui and an indefatigable teacher, scholastic administrator, and writer. His highly successful Elements de l’économie politique (1845; entitled Traité from 1860 on; we may add his Éléments des finances, 1858, which also grew into a Traité) is chiefly interesting as a sample of French pre- Millian economics. His Éléments de statistique commands the same kind of interest. His annotated French edition of Malthus’ Essay on Population (1845) is more significant. He had to be mentioned because it has been said—and, to judge by quotations, not without reason—that he enjoyed Review of the troops 473 international reputation. It may be proper to add here the name of Charles Ganilh (1758–1836), who also continued to be quoted in that type of theoretical literature whose authors thought it necessary to preface whatever it was they had to say by a complete survey of the older writers who had pronounced upon their subject. His Systèmes d’économie politique (1809), an early history of economic thought, deserves to be noticed on account of its date as well as because it did not fall in, uncritically, as later: both, but especially Garnier, kept on being quoted. Third, Destutt de Tracy, also, has been too often quoted, though mainly in the literature of his own time, to be passed by completely. 19 A few others will be mentioned as occasions arise. But no occasion will arise to mention Canard and Bastiat. So their names may as well stand here. Canard’s performance (N.F.Canard, Principes d’économie politique, 1801, a curious revival of Cantillon’s Trois rentes) is sometimes listed among early contributions to mathematical economics (on the strength of a few algebraic formulae that mean nothing) but would otherwise partake of the blessings of deserved oblivion, had not a misfortune befallen it. This misfortune consisted in its being ‘crowned’ by the same French Academy that later on failed to extend any recognition to Cournot and Walras. And those Olympians who felt their neglect the more bitterly on account of the honor done to Canard visited him with a scathing contempt that bestowed upon him an unenviable immortality: in the history of scientific bodies, Canard is forever sure of a place. The book is, however, far from being the worst that was ever written. It had some influence on Sismondi. with the prevailing current of Smith-Say free trade. His Théorie de l’économie politique…(1815) is redeemed from complete insignificance by its ‘realistic’ or ‘factual’ quality. 19 A.L.C.Destutt, Comte de Tracy (1754–1836) was a figure of some importance in the intellectual scenery of the Napoleonic Empire (and a little before and a little after)—a thinker by the grace of nature, though the latter had failed to add the gift of originality. He had, moreover, been formed in the eighteenth-century world; and while such attention as his thought received is an interesting symptom of the survival of eighteenth-century attitudes, his thought itself is a not less interesting example of partially successful adaptation. Philosophically, he belongs in the Condillac tradition, politically—in spite of a number of critical reservations— among the many heirs to Montesquieu. His broadly conceived Élémens d’idéologie (the best translation I can think of is one into Scottish: System of Moral Philosophy) began to appear in 1801, a Traité de la volonté being one of the installments. Another installment of what was to remain a torso, was a treatise on economics, republished under this title (Traité d’économie politique) in 1823. With due respect for the spacious whole of which this treatise—which belongs to the Say group—was a component part, I have to confess that I cannot find in it anything to distinguish it except one feature: Destutt de Tracy was not a philosopher for nothing. He had an eye for logical rigor. Hence he insisted on neat conceptualization. One of his definitions—that production means change of form or place; Ramsay added time—was taken up by some English economists. But, by stressing what may be termed the physical aspect of production, it obscures the History of economic analysis 474 economic one. He also insisted that value must be measured in a value unit, it being the essence of measurement to compare the thing to be measured with a given quantity of the same thing chosen as a unit (as, e.g., length is measured in meters). Ricardo quoted this statement approvingly, but it is misleading. Other examples could be quoted in order to show that his preoccupation with logical foundations, which might have produced useful results, remained sterile. Frédéric Bastiat’s (1801–50) case has been given undue prominence by remorseless critics. But it is simply the case of the bather who enjoys himself in the shallows and then goes beyond his depth and drowns. A strong free trader and laissez-faire enthusiast, he rose into prominence by a brilliantly written article, ‘De l’influence des tarifs français et anglais sur l’avenir des deux peuples’ (Journal des économistes, 1844), which was grist to the mill of the small group of Paris free traders who then tried to parallel Cobden’s agitation in England. A series of Sophismes économiques followed, whose pleasant wit—petition of candle-makers and associated industries for protection against the unfair competition of the sun and that sort of thing—that played merrily on the surface of the free-trade argument has ever since been the delight of many. Bastiat ran the French free-trade association, displaying a prodigious activity, and presently turned his light artillery against his socialist compatriots. So far, so good—or at any rate, no concern of ours. Admired by sympathizers, reviled by opponents, his name might have gone down to posterity as the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived. But in the last two years of his life (his hectic career only covers the years 1844–50) he embarked upon work of a different kind, a first volume of which, the Harmonies économiques, was published in 1850. The reader will please understand that Bastiat’s confidence in unconditional laissez faire (his famous ‘optimism’)—or any other aspect of his social philosophy—has nothing whatever to do with the adverse appraisal that seems to me to impose itself, although it motivated most of the criticism he got. Personally, I even think that Bastiat’s exclusive emphasis on the harmony of class interests is, if anything, rather less silly than is exclusive emphasis on the antagonism of class interests. Nor should it be averred that there are no good ideas at all in the book. Nevertheless, its deficiency in reasoning power or, at all events, in power to handle the analytic apparatus of economics, puts it out of court here, I do not hold that Bastiat was a bad theorist. I hold that he was no theorist. This fact was bound to tell in what was essentially a venture in theory, but does not affect any other merits of his. I have said nothing of the charge that he plagiarized Carey that was urged by Carey himself, and then by Ferrara and Dühring. Since I cannot see scientific merit in the Harmonies in any case, this question is of no importance for this book. But readers who do take interest in it are referred to Professor E.Teilhac’s balanced and scholarly treatment of it in Pioneers of American Economic Thought (English trans. by Professor E.A.J.Johnson, 1936). His argument establishes, with considerable success, that much that seems at first sight unrelieved plagiarism is Review of the troops 475 accounted for by the French sources that Bastiat and Carey had in common. Bastiat’s Oeuvres complètes with a biography were published in a second edition (1862–4). For the rest, we must be content to notice what I believe to be one of the best textbooks of ‘classic’ economics, Cherbuliez’ Précis. 20 5. GERMANY In the German section of our picture we see first of all the old ‘cameralist’ tradition—the tradition of the German Consultant Administrators—in a process of partial transformation under the influence of A.Smith. Though translated for the first time immediately after publication (1776–8), the Wealth of Nations took time to become effective. The profession of the Staatswissenschaft did not at first like it much, and, as has been mentioned before, some were inclined to put Steuart’s Principles above it. But they experienced a very thorough change of heart around 1800, when first a few and before long a majority turned enthusiastically Smithian. This was in fact more natural for them than had been the initial resistance because, as has also been mentioned, their own ideas had been moving on similar lines for many years before that. The works of Hufeland, von Jakob, Kraus, and von Soden suffice to exemplify this Smithian cameralism: Gottlieb Hufeland (1760–1817), Neue Grundlegung der Staatswirthschaftskunst…(1807–13; the second volume, on money, is rather interesting); L.H.von Jakob (1759–1827), Grundsätze der National-ökonomie (1805, enlarged and improved later on); C.J.Kraus (1753–1807), Staatswirthschaft (1808–11); Count F.J. H. von Soden (1754–1831), Die Nationalökonomie (1805–24). Jakob and Kraus were also philosophers (Kantians). All four were Smithians in the sense that almost all their thought and work in economics fed and turned upon the Wealth of Nations. Kraus, an influential teacher, who instilled his opinion into many future public servants, 1 embraced it with uncritical enthusiasm: he spoke of it as the only ‘true, great, noble, and beneficent system’ and was one of those who compared it to the New Testament in importance. Hufeland and Jakob, though Smithian enough, did not go quite so far as this; von Soden was still more independent. His criticisms of A.Smith were not well taken but he occasionally followed lines of his own. In particular, he adumbrated the idea, later on developed by List, that the true aim of foreign trade or any other policy was not so much immediate gain in welfare but rather the development of the nation’s productive resources, a ‘mercantilist’ point of view, which is of importance not only for recommendation but also for analysis. All four were men of 20 A.E.Cherbuliez (1797–1869), a Swiss lawyer by training and for part of his life by vocation, later a politician and professor of economics, was at first a political scientist rather than an economist. He was past forty when he seriously turned to economics, and he never produced anything original. But he excelled at exposition and his Précis de la science économique…(1862), deserves notice as one of the high points of the textbook literature of that period. Its success was considerable, but rather below its merit. History of economic analysis 476 1 Some of those public servants co-operated in the Stein-Hardenberg legislation. There is thus a not uninteresting relation between the Wealth of Nations and that Prussian reformer, von Jakob, who taught at the University of Kharkov as well as at the University of Halle, acted as a consultant to official commissions in St. Petersburg, and did much toward spreading Smithian doctrine in Russia. some eminence, and I am prepared to defend my choice. But the reader should understand that several other names might have served equally well. Two men should be added who are not usually listed as German economists. The one, Count G.F.Buquoy Longueval (1781–1851) was a very interesting man: a great Austrian nobleman, very wealthy, very radical (as an old man he took part in the revolution of 1848), a gifted dilettante in many fields, more than a dilettante in at least two (theoretical mechanics and economics). He wrote, among older things, a Theorie der Nationalwirthschaft…(1815; supplements 1816–19) and a tract on money and monetary policy,… Ein auf echten Nationalcredit fundiertes Geld…(1819), both of which are Smithian in their bases but contain several interesting and original suggestions, that of a managed paper currency among others. Man and writings are forgotten unjustly, so I think. The other man to be added fared better and, having been discussed in his day in England and France, has kept a place in the history of our subject: H.F.von Storch (1766–1835), who, though a German by race and training, is usually treated as Russian because of his career in the Russian service. His historical and statistical studies on Russia should be mentioned first (especially: Historisch-statistisches Gemälde [picture] des Russischen Reiches am Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1797–1803). I have ‘skipped’ through the 9 volumes but am not competent to judge how far Storch succeeded in exhausting the possibilities offered by his materials. As regards his systematic work (Cours d’économie politique …1815) and his venture in income analysis (Considerations sur la nature du revenu national, 1824) it should be pointed out that the factual bent of the former and the ethical commonplaces contained in it do not justify the habit of historians of doctrine of placing him—as a member or as a forerunner— with the later historico-ethical school. He was not more ‘factual’ than A.Smith, and to separate him methodologically from his English contemporaries only serves to blur contour lines: Senior’s factual work is in the reports of royal commissions instead of in his Political Economy but this is no reason for speaking of irreconcilable methodological differences between the two. If Storch doubted the possibility of formulating universal laws about economic phenomena, he did so in a sense that Senior and J.S.Mill would have heartily approved, that is, in the sense that the concrete economic phenomena, as historically given, do not obey simple and universally valid rules. For the rest, his analysis may be best described by the term ‘critical Smithianism’: his bases and conceptual apparatus are substantially Smithian but Storch disagreed with both Smith and Say on a number of important points. Particularly as regards income analysis. Storch has some claim to being listed, along with Lauderdale, Malthus, and Sismondi, as a forerunner of Keynesianism and Review of the troops 477 of similar tendencies that asserted themselves, on and off, later on. However, if I understand his argument in the Considérations, there is not much in it: like all the authors in that line, he neglected, as much as other people overstress, the equilibrating mechanisms in the capitalist process. But we shall return to this. For the present, I want to make sure that the reader does not forget this man: though he does not rank high as a theorist, he is a significant figure. Smithianism, increasingly leavened with a little (often misunderstood) Ricardo and relieved of some of the older stuff about eighteenth-century administrative policy—this is the formula that characterizes the common run of German economics until and even a little beyond the end of the period under survey. This material took the textbook shape that proved satisfactory for decades in the work of Rau. 2 But from this level and far above it rose the performances of two men of remarkable talent and force, Hermann and Mangoldt. In deference to a curious habit of the German historians of economics, I add Bernhardi. Considering that Thünen and Marx followed paths of their own that were not within sight of that common run, we might feel inclined to discount the reputation of F.B.W.von Hermann (1795–1868) on the ground that he stands out for lack of competition. There is something in this. Nevertheless, his Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen (1832; enlarged ed. 1870; reprint 1924), though it has not made scientific history, largely merits the many compliments that have been paid to it, even by A.Marshall. Hermann’s good sense saved him all the energies that others spent on their doubts about ‘abstract methods’ and that sort of thing, and his acute and balanced mind played unimpeded about the fundamentals of economic theory. His method was as simple as it was meritorious, considering the date of his book: he started from ‘supply and demand’ and proceeded to investigate the factors behind it. His neat conceptualization did the rest and the success was considerable: it is not generally realized that his work spelled a long stride beyond Ricardo. This suffices to characterize his merits as a theorist in a general way. But it does not do justice to his factual work (statistical and other), and it does not do justice to the man, who as politician, civil servant, and teacher has left his mark upon the formative years of Germany. Hans von Mangoldt (1824–68) is much less well known. Nevertheless, this civil servant and professor (at Göttingen and Freiburg) was among the century’s most significant figures in our field. Apart from his historical work on the industry of Saxony, there are two important con- 2 K.H.Rau (1792–1870), professor first in Erlangen and then in Heidelberg, certainly had sound common sense, learning, and mediocrity. But if any other qualities are needed for the production of a successful textbook, he must have had them also. The many editions of his Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie (1826– 37:1st vol., theory [the ‘laws’]; 2nd vol., applied economics or economic policy, or Polizeiwissenschaft; 3rd vol.—the best—public finance) are less indicative of History of economic analysis 478 its sweeping success than is the fact that Adolf Wagner thought it worthy of being remodeled instead of being replaced by an entirely new one. As a teacher, Rau must stand high in the history of economics, although little can be said in favor of the book except that it marshalled a rich supply of facts very neatly—and that it was just what the future lawyer or civil servant was able and willing to absorb. tributions which we have to notice: his Die Lehre vom Unternehmergewinn (1855; substantially a rent-of-ability theory of entrepreneurial gain) and his Grundriss der Volkswirtschaftslehre (1863; the 2nd ed., published posthumously in 1871, leaves out the most original element in it, namely, the geometrical apparatus that Mangoldt devised for the theory of international values; but Edgeworth brought it to light again). Theodor von Bernhardi (1802–87) owes his reputation to Roscher’s history of German economics. I have called the habit of listing his name indefinitely a curious one because there is really no reason for it that will stand examination. The title of the work in question I had better give in translation: Critical Essay on the Arguments that are being adduced for Large and Small Properties in Land (1849). Bernhardi, an extremely intelligent layman of wide culture and experience, discussed those arguments no doubt very sensibly. But it was not this which aroused Roscher’s enthusiasm. Bernhardi put his topic into a spacious—and specious—framework of general considerations about the social and economic backgrounds from which English ‘classic’ doctrines arose, showing their historical and sociological relativity and their limited validity—quite successfully of course—but also showing inability to realize the difference between views or recommendations on practical questions and theorems. Since Thünen and Marx (if the latter should indeed be called a German economist at all) are noticed elsewhere, we are, for the rest, left with List and Rodbertus, on the one hand—it is slightly disconcerting to observe that Thünen, Marx, List, and Rodbertus were all of them nonprofessorial economists—and with Roscher, Hildebrand, and Knies, the members of what has been termed the Older Historical School, on the other. Friedrich List (1789–1846) holds a great place both in the opinion and in the affections of his countrymen. This is owing to his successful championship of the customs union of the German States (Zollverein), the embryo of German national unity. What this association means to Germans cannot be understood by members of those fortunate nations for which the right to national existence and national ambitions is a matter of course. It means that List, like all those whose names are associated with that long and painful struggle, is a national hero. Far be it for me to criticize this attitude or to withhold admiration from List in any other respect except the one that unfortunately happens to be the only one that counts in this book. Even as a scientific economist, however, List had one of the elements of greatness, namely, the grand vision of a national Review of the troops 479 situation, which, though not in itself a scientific achievement, is a prerequisite for a certain type of scientific achievement—that type of which, in our own day, Keynes is an outstanding example. Nor was List deficient in the specifically scientific requisites that must come in to implement vision if it is to bear scientific fruits: his analytic apparatus was in fact ideally adequate for his practical purpose. But the individual pieces of this analytic apparatus were not particularly novel. List saw a nation that struggled in the fetters imposed by a miserable immediate past, but he also saw all its economic potentialities. The national future, therefore, was the real object of his thought, the present was nothing but a state of transition. He realized that, in an essentially transitional state of this kind, policies lose their meaning when they are geared to the task of administering an existing set of conditions that is visualized as substantially permanent. This he expressed by his doctrine of ‘stages’—a felicitous device, so far as his educational purpose was concerned, but in itself not more than an old eighteenth-century idea. Furthermore, he realized (like Soden) that emphasis upon the national future modifies welfare considerations ex visu of the present. This he expressed by his doctrine of ‘productive forces’ (Produktionskräfte) that in his system hold place of honor as compared with the consumers’ goods that can be made available at a given level of the productive forces—not unfelicitous, this, as an educational device but not much more than a label for an unsolved problem. Finally, as regards his best-known contribution to the education of German public opinion on economic policy, the infant- industry argument, this is clearly Hamiltonian and part of the economic wisdom that List imbibed during his stay in the United States. So fully Americanized had List become then that he actually advocated financing railroad construction by the issue of banknotes, for which practice there were only—and hardly wholly creditable—American precedents. It should be remarked, in passing, that List’s argument about protection issues into the free-trade argument: if this is not obvious, we can convince ourselves of it by noticing the fact that J.S.Mill accepted the infant- industry theory, evidently realizing that it ran within the free-trade logic. 8 This, I think, does justice to, and at the same time reduces to its proper proportions, List’s analytic gifts and performance. Those who insist on making their hero the possessor of merits of all conceivable types have put his thought into spurious relations of the kind that create spurious history. He was an heir to eighteenth-century thought. He was an offshoot of romanticism. He was a forerunner of the historical school of economics. There is not more in all this than that everyone is heir to 8 Incidentally, it may be remarked that to call List’s plans ‘nationalist’ or ‘imperialist’ is to play upon double meanings in both cases. History of economic analysis 480 everything that went before him and a forerunner of everything that comes after him. He was a great patriot, a brilliant journalist with definite purpose, and an able economist who co-ordinated well whatever seemed useful for implementing his vision. Is this not enough? Of all his writings the Outlines of American Political Economy (1827) is the most interesting for us because it displays his system in its earliest stage of development. His mature work that grew out of this, Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie (1841; English trans. 1885), remains a classic in the eulogistic sense of the word, all the comments above notwithstanding. A new and comprehensive edition of his works (Schrif-ten, Reden, Briefe) has been published (1927–32) by the German List Society (List- Gesellschaft), which also publishes List-Studien. Johann Karl Rodbertus’ (1805–75) name also owes something to circumstances: on the one hand, he did not meet either the competition or the criticism he would have met in England; on the other hand, though he spurned class struggle and revolution and was fundamentally a conservative monarchist, he was also a votary of a certain type of state socialism that was acceptable to a large sector of the public. For the rest, his social and political philosophies, including the manual workers’ natural right to the whole product of industry (on the time-honored ground that all commodities are products of, or cost, manual labor only), are no concern of ours. But certain recommendations must be mentioned because they shed light on the analysis from which they proceed. The proposition that it is the institutional pattern alone that deprives labor of part of ‘its’ product was reflected in his recommendation to change this institutional pattern by state action such as taxation (one of the first proposals, in the liberalist world of that age, to use taxation for purposes other than revenue) and to fix not only prices and wages but also property incomes. His theory of rent of land was reflected in, but is not essential to, an extremely sensible proposal that has had some practical effect in Germany, namely the proposal to substitute for the mortgage that embodies a capital claim a mortgage that embodies only the right to an annual payment. His theory of poverty and of cycles was reflected in the proposal, which sounds so modern, to eliminate both by a redistribution of incomes. Rodbertus’ analytic schema can be most briefly and at the same time most tellingly described in this way. Fundamentally, and in the same sense as Marx, he was a Ricardian. His analytic effort was an effort to develop Ricardian doctrine in a certain direction and was in essentials parallel to, though different from, Marx’s effort. According to dates of publication, Marx could have derived inspiration from Rodbertus, particularly as regards the unitary conception of all non-wage incomes— Marx’s surplus value and Rodbertus’ ‘rent’—which is a feature of both schemata. In the main, however, Rodbertus’ example can at best have Review of the troops 481 . whose work of factual analysis, were History of economic analysis 472 comparison admissible, many of us would place above that of the mere analyst. But all the energies of many of the able. followers of Say and as the core of a school which, if we date it from 1803, the year of the publication of Say’s Traité, boasts of a history of about a century. We shall consider it in the next Part. . notice as one of the high points of the textbook literature of that period. Its success was considerable, but rather below its merit. History of economic analysis 476 1 Some of those public