and genuine simplicity—all of which was entirely free from sanctimoniousness or any propensity to preach. His early scientific development must have been seriously interfered with by his entering the civil service immediately on completing the usual legal studies that, as we know, left but little room for economics. He was thirty when he was appointed to the University of Innsbruck, and the eight years he taught there define the whole of the time that he was able to devote, in the plenitude of his powers, to scientific economics. He was a hard, systematic, and effective worker, and we need not, perhaps, deduct very much from his fund of energy on the score of academic teaching. More of it, however, went into his polemics, by which he established himself as by far the most eminent champion of Menger’s teaching. 3 The rest went into the chief work of his life, Kapital und Kapitalzins (1st vol., 1884; 4th ed., 1921; English trans., 1890; 2nd vol., 1889; 4th ed., 1921; English trans., 1891). Volume I, Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorien appeared in English as Capital and Interest; Volume II, Positive Theorie des Kapitales as Positive Theory of Capital. Work on the second volume that contains his own creative contribution—the first contains a series of criticisms of interest theories—had to be curtailed and the volume had to be hurried through the press in parts as the author wrote it—anticipating his re-entry into the Ministry of Finance for the purpose of preparing the great fiscal reform of 1896. Distinct ideas are but imperfectly welded together; in essential respects the author changed his standpoints while writing; different currents of his own thought run side by side; the decisive later chapters are frankly provisional (see Preface to the unchanged 2nd ed.) and as he was able to make them, not as he wanted to make them. A brilliant but absorbing career followed from 1889 to 1904, during which he held cabinet office three times and had no more leisure than is implied in scanty leaves of absence and occasional hours that he snatched from official work, especially in the early mornings. Even so he kept up a peripherical relation with academic teaching (he was Honorary Professor at the University of Vienna, occasionally conducting a seminar). Also he was able to do some writing of a polemical or expository nature. Among other things, he produced his famous criticism of the Marxist system. 4 But he was not able to do original work. Leisure came indeed in 1905, when (refusing the most lucrative post in the gift of the Crown) he accepted appointment as ‘ordinary’ (full) professor at the University of Vienna. This spelled freedom from all but self-imposed duties and also from the petty vexations of modern life, since all ‘authorities’ of that environment were infinitely respectful to the Privy Councilor full of honors. But he was older in mind and body than in years. Though he conducted his famous seminar to his death (1914), his creative force was spent. He did work at his Kapital and added formidable appendices, but no real progress was possible any more. The revised and en- 3 These and later parerga of his have been republished as Gesammelte Schriften (2 vols., 1924–6) by Professor Franz X.Weiss, one of the ablest of Böhm Bawerk’s pupils. 4 Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems (1896) translated as Karl Marx and the Close of His System (1898). [New edition (with Hilferding’s reply), ed. with introduction by P.M.Sweezy, 1949.] History of economic analysis 812 larged third edition of Kapital und Kapitalzins was published in three volumes, 1909–14 [volume II was expanded into two volumes, II, 1 and II, 2]; an unchanged fourth edition with an introduction by von Wieser appeared in 1921. Let us neglect Böhm-Bawerk’s championship of the marginal utility principle, his critique of Marx, and a few other things that might be mentioned, and ask what was the nature and significance of his main contribution. The answer that most people are likely to return is: a theory of interest and, in connection with it, the ‘period of production.’ This answer is wholly inadequate. The Böhm-Bawerkian theory of interest and, incidentally, the Böhm-Bawerkian period of production are only two elements in a comprehensive model of the economic process, the roots of which may be discerned in Ricardo and which parallels that of Marx. Part of it is, naturally, a complete theory of distribution— not of interest alone—that culminates in ‘The Capital Market fully Developed’ (see Part 2 of Positive Theorie, Book IV, 3rd and 4th eds.), where the stock of goods, the period of turnover, wages, and interest are simultaneously determined. If we wish to label his place in the history of economics, we had better call him the bourgeois Marx. 5 There is thus a Ricardian root to Böhm-Bawerk’s achievement 6 though he was entirely unaware of it. Equally unaware was he of the fact that he had been anticipated, in one essential point by Rae. 7 Finally, much more definitely, he was anticipated by Jevons—his relation to the latter is not unlike that of Marshall. Occasional anticipations on this point or that occur fairly frequently, one of them, as we have seen, in Senior and another in Newcomb’s Principles. Subjectively, however, he was so completely the enthusiastic disciple of Menger that it is hardly necessary to look for other influences. It is not only that he followed Menger in matters of value and price: even the two propositions that the productivity of a given ‘quantity’ of capital can be increased by extending the period of production and that we habitually undervalue future pleasures as compared with present ones—two cornerstones as we shall see of the specifically Böhm-Bawerkian theory of capital and interest—had been indicated by 5 There is a good reason as well as a bad one for the surprise the reader is likely to feel as he reads this statement. The good reason is that Marx was much more than in economist. Of course, the statement refers only to Marx’s economic theory of the capitalist process. The bad reason is that when thinking of Marx, we have habitually in mind what are non-essentials from the standpoint of this book—the agitatorial gesture, the prophetic wrath. Leaving these out and looking at the cold analytic steel frame below, the reader will not find my statement so surprising. Böhm-Bawerk’s marginalism makes but a technical difference; being a more efficient tool, it clears from his path the spurious problems that Marx encountered on his. 6 This has been pointed out repeatedly by Professor Knight and also by Dr. Edelberg (see above, Part III, ch. 4, sec. 2). 7 When he wrote the original work, Böhm-Bawerk did not know more of Rae than the quotations in Mill that do not reveal the core of Rae’s analysis. He used Rae in the 3rd ed. See on this C.W.Mixter (‘Böhm-Bawerk on Rae,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1902), who, however, greatly overstates the case for Rae. The general economics of the period 813 Menger. 8 It is this rather than Jevons’ priority that raises the question of Böhm-Bawerk’s originality. It could be argued that a man who had it in him to develop such embryonic suggestions into an imposing organic whole hardly needed any suggestions at all. But it is not necessary to do so. It is Böhm-Bawerk’s model or schema of the economic process adumbrated above which makes him one of the great architects of economic science, and this schema was quite outside Menger’s as well as Jevons’ range of vision. A few of the best minds in our field, Wicksell and Taussig 9 in particular, have in fact considered him as such. But much more numerous, from the first, were critics and detractors. This is due, in the first place, to Böhm-Bawerk’s reserve, which, though he had very many pupils, prevented him from turning them, as did Marshall, into disciples: hence he never acquired a scientific bodyguard that would stand ready to sally forth in his defense. In the second place, the famous controversialist had accumulated many accounts that some people were not slow in settling. 10 In the third place, as explained above, Böhm-Bawerk’s work had not been permitted to mature: it is essentially (not formally) a first draft whose growth into something much more perfect was arrested and never resumed. Moreover, it is doubtful whether Böhm-Bawerk’s primitive technique and in particular his lack of mathematical training would ever have allowed him to attain perfection. Thus, the work, besides being very difficult to understand, bristles with inadequacies that invite criticism—for instance, as he put it, the ‘production period’ is next to being nonsense—and impedes his reader’s progress to the core of his thought. In consequence, criticism of individual points was often successful, and such piecemeal defeats injured the reputation of the whole. He even got criticism from such eminently fair-minded men as Irving Fisher, who seems never to have realized how much his Theory of Interest owes to Böhm-Bawerk, though he, of all men, was certainly anxious and even over-anxious to do justice to any predecessors he could find. By the time Keynes wrote his Treatise, it was 8 This is the more noteworthy because Menger, far from welcoming that theory as a development of suggestions of his, severely condemned it from the first. In his somewhat grandiloquent style he told me once: ‘The time will come when people will realize that Böhm-Bawerk’s theory is one of the greatest errors ever committed.’ He deleted those hints in his 2nd edition. 9 That eminent man (Taussig) told me once (I think it was in the spring of 1914) that he considered Böhm-Bawerk the greatest economist of all times, excepting Ricardo alone (or even that he considered Ricardo and Böhm-Bawerk, on a par, the two greatest economists: I do not remember which). 10 Let us note in passing the indictment of unfairness in criticism that has been so often leveled at Böhm-Bawerk, e.g. by Marshall. As raised, I believe this indictment to be without foundation. But Böhm-Bawerk’s was an advocate’s mind. He was unable to see anything but the letter of the opponent’s argument and never seems to have asked himself whether the offending letter did not cover some element of truth. This often impaired his critical argument, though his criticism nevertheless remains the best existing series of exercises in theoretical thinking of that type. It is thus understandable that unsympathetic readers of his sometimes derived an impression that is voiced by that indictment. History of economic analysis 814 an almost general opinion that Böhm-Bawerk’s theory was just a curious error—and not to be discussed seriously any more. And yet his ideas keep on turning up and teaching people, critics and detractors included, their business. This, in fact, his ideas had done from the first: though Böhm-Bawerk got few compliments, and acquired few disciples, he was and still is one of the profession’s great teachers. 11 Friedrich von Wieser (1851–1926) was a very different man. He was a born thinker, and a brief spell of civil service in his youth and a still briefer spell of cabinet office in his middle sixties were the only interruptions in a pacific and uneventful academic career in Prague and Vienna. This thinker is, however, difficult to characterize. The great thing about him was a spacious vision that went deep below the surface. But he implemented this vision very imperfectly, for he not only lacked, like Böhm-Bawerk, the necessary technical training, but in addition, the natural aptitude for turning out an effective argument. His sociology, which merits more attention than it has received (Recht und Macht, 1910; Gesetz der Macht, 1926), has been already mentioned; his significant contribution to the theory of money will be mentioned in the appropriate place. Of his three great works in general theory, the first, Über den Ursprung und die Hauptgesetze des wirthschaftlichen Werthes (1884) has the merit of re-emphasizing and developing the Mengerian argument on value (he coined the term Grenznutzen, marginality) and no other, though even that meant a great deal at the time; the second, Der Natürliche Werth (1889; English trans., 1893) worked out the Austrian theories of cost and distribution (he coined the phrase Zurechnung, imputation), which Menger had not more than sketched, and this work must in spite of the latter fact and also in spite of glaring faults of technique, rank high as an original achievement; the third, Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft (in M.Weber’s Grundriss der Sozialökonomik, I, 1914; English trans. Social Economics, 1927), while adding nothing essentially new, is an impressive summary of a lifetime’s economic thought. History knows him—the extent to which it knows him, however, varies greatly from historian to historian—chiefly as the man who rounded out the Austrian structure, though some of his ideas were more akin to those of Walras than to those of Menger. The best appreciation of his significance as a theorist is to be found in Professor Stigler’s book, to which reference is here made 11 This holds true independently of the Böhm-Bawerkian revival incident to the great success, in the early 1930’s, of Professor von Hayek’s theory of business cycles. Professor Knight was not tilting at windmills when he opened his vigorous attack upon Böhm-Bawerk’s teaching in 1933 (‘Capitalist Production, Time, and the Rate of Return,’ Economic Essays in Honour of Gustav Cassel) and 1934 (‘Capital, Time, and the Interest Rate,’ Economica, August) that evoked a lively controversy (for main items see N.Kaldor, The Recent Controversy on the Theory of Capital,’ Econometrica, July 1937). Unfortunately, the essential point about Böhm-Bawerk’s message has been only occasionally noticed or brushed against in this literature. The general economics of the period 815 once for all. 12 His Gesammelte Abhandlungen have been edited, with a biographical introduction, by Professor von Hayek (1929). Space does not permit more than a brief reference to the work of two remarkable men: Rudolf Auspitz (1837–1906), an industrialist who fought the cartel that increased his profits (which increase he handed over to his employees), a politician who was co-author of the bill that introduced the progressive income tax, and Richard Lieben (1842–1919), his relation and scientific collaborator, a private banker of artistic tastes. They produced one of the outstanding theoretical performances of the age, the Untersuchungen über die Theorie des Preises (1889; the first part was published separately in 1887; French trans., 1914). Technically, they were immensely superior to their compatriots and both because of this and because they put partial-analysis problems into the foreground, their work looks less ‘Austrian’ than it is. It received some recognition from Edgeworth and more from Irving Fisher, but was without honor at home. Their total and marginal supply and demand curve apparatus (they did not use average curves) was an original contribution at the time, as was the general theory of the appendix that was not noticed at all. I have described the Austrian school as the one of the two live influences in German general economics. But this influence did not assert itself perceptibly until after 1900, and even later the German attitude toward it was not wholly friendly. 13 There were several reasons for this. First it was but natural that men primarily interested in the practical problems of their day and in historical work should not welcome the renascence of a type of research that they considered fundamentally wrong or at least uninteresting. Second, many men but especially Schmoller—who frankly admitted his error later on— associated theory with ‘Manchesterism,’ that is, with unconditional laissez-faire. They therefore thought that they beheld not only a renascence of a type of analysis they did not like but also a renascence of a type of economic thought—or of a political economy— they abhorred. Third, most of the existing theorists were either under Marxist influence— and the Marxists naturally were incapable of seeing in a new theory anything but a new piece of bourgeois apologetics—or else were the faithful followers of the English ‘classics’: some of them out-Marshalled Marshall in their admiration for Ricardo and J.S.Mill but, unlike Marshall, refused steadfastly to advance beyond them. 14 Nor were the various guerrilleros, who tried new starts for them- 12 George J.Stigler, Production and Distribution Theories [of Jevons, Wicksteed, Marshall, Edgeworth, Menger, Wieser, Böhm-Bawerk, Walras, Wicksell, J.B.Clark], 1941. This excellent work by a competent theorist is perhaps the best survey in existence of the theoretical work of that period’s leaders and is strongly recommended. This recommendation does not imply agreement in every point of fact or evaluation. 13 Even as late as 1918, the great success of G.Cassel’s Theoretische Sozialökonomie was due as much to its usefulness as a textbook as to the fact that, on the surface, it was hostile to both the Austrians and to Walras. 14 H.Dietzel (discussed below) went further than anyone else: he actually thought that it was possible to preserve the whole of the ‘classic’ structure, and this in 1921! (Vom Lehrwert der Wertlehre…, 1921.) History of economic analysis 816 selves, any more disposed to accept an analytic schema which, however simple it was, could not be appreciated without some theoretical training. In England, an initial advance soon ran up against the Marshallian castle that ‘frowned in awful state’ upon the Austrian cottage. In the United States recognition was freely extended by a number of economists. But since the country developed a ‘marginalist’ school of its own and since some of the most eminent American economists, Irving Fisher in particular, followed Walras rather than the Austrian triumvirate, the situation did not differ very much from the English one. In France, the Austrian teaching fell in with a national tradition and, being more acceptable than the mathematical one of Walras, made considerable headway, Leroy- Beaulieu, Gide, Landry, Colson (who however was more Walrasian) and many others extending more or less hospitality to it. In Italy success was substantial at first. But the Austrian impulse soon petered out or was submerged by the teaching of Pareto. The earliest as well as the most lasting of the Austrian successes were in the Netherlands and in the Scandinavian countries. (b) The Elder Statesmen. Science progresses, so Böhm-Bawerk once told a restless and recalcitrant young man, through the old professors’ dying off. However, before promoting the progress of science by doing so, these old professors are in the picture and some of them must be mentioned. I choose Roscher, who lasted until 1894, Knies, Schäffle, Stein, all of whom we have met already and all of whom exerted significant influence. No more need be said of Roscher. Karl Knies (1821–98) was above all a great teacher who made Heidelberg a center of study and research in which the most diverse types were welcomed and made to work together. Of his many works, I shall mention only his chief performance Geld und Credit (1873–9). Albert Schäffle (1831–1903), the Swabian radical—if he lived today and in the United States, we should characterize him as a New Dealer or even as a Parlor Pink—Austrian cabinet minister (1871), and then a student enjoying lettered ease in his little home town for over thirty years, had less opportunity for teaching but exerted formative influence as a writer. But unless there is more to his ambitiously conceived Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (1875–8) than I am able to find in it, economic analysis cannot be said to owe much to him. His works in taxation will be mentioned in their place. [The section on taxation in ch. 6 was not completed, Ed.] Lorenz von Stein (1815–90), the student of French socialism, professor in Vienna, 1855–88, established himself as an authority on public administration and public finance. His textbook of economics is insignificant and I mention him merely because it seems incongruous to leave out of the picture a no doubt brilliant figure. (c) The Representatives. The names of academic leaders that first arise in one’s mind, when one thinks of German economists of the period under survey, are of course those that have been mentioned in the preceding chapter, and in particular Brentano, Bücher, Knapp, Schmoller, Sombart, Wagner, and M.Weber. I select in order to illustrate various aspects of the situation, Bortkiewicz, Diehl, Dietzel, Launhardt, Lexis, Philippovich, and Schulze-Gaevernitz. But there I must stop. Many successful teachers, such as Johannes Conrad, the kindly mentor The general economics of the period 817 of many American visitors, or Gustav Cohn or Pohle or Held or the excellent Nasse or Herkner must be passed by. Of the first group only Adolf Wagner (1835–1917) needs additional comment. We know him already as a leader in the fight for Sozialpolitik and a—politically— conservative reformer. Besides he has to his credit substantial performance in the field of money that will be noticed in Chapter 8. Also, we shall have to notice his work in public finance (Finanzwissenschaft, 4 vols., 1877–1901). It is on these achievements that his historical reputation must be expected to rest. Now we have to consider him as an analytic economist in general. He felt himself to be a ‘theorist’ in the sense that he was opposed to historism. But though by no means friendly to the Schmoller school, he emphasized historical relativity by his famous, if not exactly novel, distinction between the ‘historico-legal’ and the ‘economic’ categories (of institutions, forms of behavior, and processes) which it is perhaps unnecessary to explain. He used to say that Rodbertus and Schäffle were the two economists from whom he had learned most and he always displayed a critical interest in Ricardo, who for him remained ‘the’ theorist to the end. Of the work of his age he absorbed but surface meanings, though he extended recognition to many foreign economists, Marshall and Taussig in particular—in that formal way that means so little—and received similar recognition, especially from Marshall, in return. Always excepting the field of money, his originality or even his competence in analytic economics cannot be rated high. Yet his name will live much longer than will that of many an expert analyst. Of his voluminous works that are, to an almost intolerable degree, affected by rabies systematica, only his Principles (Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie, 1st ed., 1876) superseded by his co-operative enterprise, the Handbook (Lehr—und Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie), need be mentioned here. Our second group consists of very heterogeneous material. Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz (1868–1931) was a trained mathematician and physicist 15 and ranks high as a statistician of the Lexis school. As a theorist he is known chiefly as one of the most competent critics of Marx 16 and Böhm-Bawerk. His essentially critical bent prevented him from producing, so far as economic theory is concerned, any creative work. Nor is this all. His criticism was at its best when directed toward details—in a sense he was a comma hunter—and he had no eye for the wider aspects and deeper meanings of a theoretical model. Bortkiewicz described himself as a Marshallian. But this meant no 15 This characteristic he shared with Wilhelm Launhardt (1832–1918), professor at the Technological School of Hanover, whose Mathematische Begründung der Volkswirthschaftslehre (1885), though substantially Walrasian and disfigured by many inadequacies, must yet be listed as a notable and, in some points, original performance (especially as to transportation and location). Thus, Germany was not entirely without ‘mathematical economics.’ It is curious to observe—and characteristic of the conditions in our field—that a type of research may be present and in full view and yet pass unnoticed. 16 On this, see P.M.Sweezy, op. cit., who entirely accepts Bortkiewicz’ revision of Marx’s theory of prices. History of economic analysis 818 more than that he liked some of the least admirable and least progressive features of Marshall’s Principles. He could have exerted beneficial influence in Berlin, however, if he had not stood on a side track—quite overshadowed by Schmoller and Wagner—and if he had been less ineffective as a teacher. Karl Diehl (1864–1943), on the contrary, stood on no side track: he occupied in Freiburg what was—partly before him and partly owing to him—one of the most prominent German chairs of economics. And he was a most effective teacher, not so much in the lecture hall as in his seminar, which formed and stimulated a large number of pupils. He was of a strongly institutionalist bent—all for historical relativity in particular. But this did not prevent him from being a genuine ‘theorist,’ that is, an economist who does not drop theory when he has done with some philosophies and quarrels about concepts, but who uses theory as an instrument with which to solve problems. His theory was neither original, nor very modern, nor very refined—its roots were in the English ‘classics’ 17 —but it was serviceable theory all the same, and in the existing situation meant a good deal. Heinrich Dietzel (1857–1935), the incumbent of another leading professorship (in Bonn), was a man of a different stamp. He, too, was primarily a theorist and the superior of Diehl in rigorous logic. But he was less effective as a teacher, both by temperament and by the singular sterility of his scientific message. He just ‘dug his toes in’ and stayed, intellectually, in the position, the ‘classic’ position, he had reached in his early manhood. Though he did some respectable work on ‘classic’ lines and contributed an interesting volume on theory (Theoretische Socialökonomik; method mainly) to Wagner’s Lehr— und Handbuch, he is not likely to be remembered except for his controversy with Böhm- Bawerk. Wagner’s and Dietzel’s cases show that it was the nature of the ‘theory’ taught, rather than either Sozialpolitik or historism, which accounts for what at first sight looks like an eclipse of analytic work of this kind that may not amount to a great deal in itself but seems to be necessary to vitalize the rest. The case of Wilhelm Lexis (1837–1914), the great statistician, displays the same thing from a slightly different angle. Lexis did work of a high grade in many fields, especially on questions of monetary policy and foreign trade. He was also prominent among the critics who attacked the Marxist system when the third volume came out. But all these writings show weaknesses on the theoretical side that are surprising in a man of no doubt remarkably keen intellect. His textbook solves the riddle, however: it shows conclusively that he took no interest whatever in the work of improving the apparatus of analysis; having grown to maturity in an anti-theoretic atmosphere, he entirely failed to perceive the scientific possibilities of the new ideas that were cropping up in his middle age. Since his purely intellectual interests were in any case 17 His Sozialwissenschaftliche Erläuterungen zu David Ricardos Grundgesetzen (see above, Part III, ch. 4) was his main scholarly achievement in this field. But his monumental Principles (Theoretische Nationalökonomie, 4 vols., 1916–33) is also a considerable work that still repays perusal. His work on Proudhon has been mentioned before. The general economics of the period 819 in the theory of statistics, he did not even bother to use mathematics—which he would not have had to acquire laboriously—in the service of his economics. We must on no account omit to mention Eugen von Philippovich (1858–1917), although we shall have to mention him again in order to use his famous textbook as a representative sample of what it was ‘the student got.’ He was one of the greatest teachers of the period, a man of intellectual stature, passionately interested in the social and economic issues of his time, yet a careful thinker and open to all the currents in scientific economics that were within his range. These virtues and in particular this catholicity of scientific taste made him an ideal mediator when mediation was sorely needed. He gave their due both to Schmoller and to Menger and all they stood for; he was wholeheartedly in sympathy with Sozialpolitik of a New-Deal type, and though not a man of ‘theory’ himself—his own research was wholly of a ‘practical’ nature—he saw to it that analytic culture should not, within the sphere of his influence, drop to zero level. Much earlier than the other Austrians, he got on terms with the spirit of German economics—he was professor in Vienna—and it was due to his influence, exerted mainly through his textbook, that marginal utility theory filtered through to German students at all. Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz (1864–1943) illustrates—at its best—still another type. So far as technical economics is concerned, this Freiburg professor can hardly be called an economist at all. But he was more—a genuine social philosopher, almost what I should like to call a social theologian, and at the same time a political observer who did not lack realism. He thus produced works 18 of wide scope that, whatever our opinion may be about their epistemological standing, have their place, besides being masterpieces of their genus. They were written with a purpose—they preached a social message. But though this is much, it is not enough unless a good technician teaches in the next room. He never seems to have realized that, if we are to apply our reason to social and international affairs, we need not only social visions, ideals, and facts, but also, since we are not Laplacian demons, certain techniques, and he unwittingly injured his pupils, some of whom were to rise to eminence, by failing to impart to them the saving minimum of technical economics (and, for this purpose, to learn it himself). Even in Marshallian England, there were Hobsons. But in Germany and Austria in a situation such as I have been trying to describe by ‘patches of color,’ where the all-round competence of all professional economists, hence the level of criticism, cannot be high, Hobsons must thrive and free-lance economists must be numerous. Trained men also, the training being what it was, would often indulge in misplaced originality that arises simply from failure to understand or master the existing apparatus of the science. Even able 18 They remind one of Adolf Held’s Zwei Bücher zur sozialen Geschichte Englands (ed. by G.F.Knapp, 1881), another man of this type whom I hate to omit. SchulzeGaevernitz’s two most important and also, I think, most characteristic works are: Zum socialen Frieden (1890; the translation of the subtitle is: ‘a description of England’s education to Sozialpolitik in the nineteenth century’), and Britischer Imperia lismus und englischer Freihandel (1906). History of economic analysis 820 men may then blunder atrociously, misconceive problems, take their errors for discoveries. In consequence, we have a long list of men who even attained success with the profession and filled considerable positions but are difficult to characterize from a professional standpoint. I shall mention some of the most eminent writers of this type but I shall not return to some of them: Effertz, Gottl, Liefmann, Oppenheimer, and Spann. Treating such men in this manner involves the duty of saying why. This duty cannot be fulfilled properly: it would take a volume. I can only state my reasons, not establish them. Otto Effertz, who was the only man in our list who failed to attain a professorship and was something of a tragic figure, produced a work, Arbeit und Boden (1890–91), which in its final form, which differs considerably from the original one, was published in French under the title Les Antagonismes économiques (1906). It is typically the work of an able man who does not know how to go about his task. My reason for excluding Effertz from my subsequent report is that removal of provable mistakes reduces his argument to commonplace. For a different opinion, see the introduction to the French volume. I fear that the only way of appreciating Professor F.von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, who held a conspicuous place and found many adherents—or else my reason for excluding him—is to read him. 19 Robert Liefmann (1874–1941) was an economist of merit, especially on cartels. Our trouble is with his theory (summed up, for example, in Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre, new ed., 1922), which presents an interesting feature. His fundamental principle of equalization of marginal returns in money (and the whole of his ‘subjective’ theory of prices) is (barring slips) nothing but a particularly inconvenient expression of the main content of the Austrian theory. But having discovered it independently, he stoutly denied any affinity, wasted powers that were well above average on conducting controversies, and asserted claims that nobody would or could take seriously. Meaningless talk about imaginary issues such as ‘subjectivism’ and ‘objectivism’ (or ‘materialism’ and ‘naturalism’) in price theory did the rest. His net contribution to topics relevant to the purposes of this book, and excepting his work on cartels, is zero. Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943) was a man of mark, a leading Zionist, a ‘positivist’ sociologist who is not likely to lose his place in the history of that line of thought, a powerful teacher who shaped many growing minds and did much to keep the flag of economic theory flying by spirited controversy. His Henry- George attitude toward private property in land 20 in itself would not suffice for my refusal to go at length into his doctrines. The reason 19 The psychic cost of doing so may, however, be substantially reduced by reading instead Professor von Haberler’s review of the methodological writings of Gottl that were republished in 1925 under the title Wirtschaft als Leben. (The review is in the Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, May 1929, entitled ‘Kritische Bemerkungen zu Gottls methodologischen Schriften.’) But no such helper is available for the rest of Gottl’s writings. 20 Oppenheimer was one of the many writers, among whom are A.Smith and Senior, who spoke of a monopoly in land. This, however, is not what I mean by the phrase in the text. He was also one of those less numerous writers who, like Henry George (and some who have been noticed in Part III), ascribed all phenomena that looked to them like deviations from proper functioning of the capitalist engine to landed property or to the exclusion of workmen from free access to land (Bodensperre), which, of course, involves the thesis that private property is the reason why land is a scarce factor at all. The abolition of this Bodensperre is (substantially) what his Liberal socialism that made a hit with many minds amounts to. The general economics of the period 821 . comprehensive model of the economic process, the roots of which may be discerned in Ricardo and which parallels that of Marx. Part of it is, naturally, a complete theory of distribution— not of interest. not only a renascence of a type of analysis they did not like but also a renascence of a type of economic thought—or of a political economy— they abhorred. Third, most of the existing theorists. Bortkiewicz’ revision of Marx’s theory of prices. History of economic analysis 818 more than that he liked some of the least admirable and least progressive features of Marshall’s Principles.