Amonn’s Leitfaden defines economics as training in theoretically disciplined judgment about practical economic order. Its purpose is not doctrinal memorization or immediate advocacy, but the capacity to translate policy questions into conceptual and causal analysis.
Das Endziel des Studiums der Nationalökonomie ist die Erlangung der Befähigung zu einer theoretisch wohlbegründeten Beurteilung praktisch-politischer Probleme der Wirtschaftsgestaltung.
English translation: The ultimate aim of the study of economics is to acquire the capacity for a theoretically well-founded judgment of practical-political problems of economic organization.
This practical orientation is therefore inseparable from theoretical restraint. Economic questions must first be clarified as questions about relations, conditions, means, and consequences. Because economics borrows many terms from ordinary speech, concepts such as production, capital, value, money, and wealth cannot be left in everyday ambiguity. “Volkswirtschaft” itself is treated not as a directly visible thing but as an abstract complex of social relations, especially in the modern money-mediated exchange economy.
Das Primäre in einer Wissenschaft sind ihre Probleme.
English translation: What is primary in a science are its problems.
This problem-centered view explains Amonn’s emphasis on the history of economic thought. Doctrine history is not antiquarian decoration but the best introduction to economics, since it shows how problems of wealth, value, distribution, money, trade, development, and order were posed and refined. Mercantilism, physiocracy, classical theory, Marx, marginal utility, Walras, Marshall, and the historical school function as stages in the clarification of enduring questions. Earlier theories remain useful because their errors often survive in popular policy while their insights preserve elementary truths with special sharpness.
The systematic core begins from the practical question of Volkswohlstand: the durable provision of scarce useful goods to a people. But Amonn immediately subjects this concern to abstract analysis rather than direct prescription.
Der Aufbau der (praktisch orientierten) nationalökonomischen Theorie geht von dem Begriff des „Volkswohlstandes“ aus
English translation: The construction of (practically oriented) economic theory proceeds from the concept of "national welfare."
Production theory examines land, labor, capital, enterprise, and their combinations as conditions of the social product. Distribution theory cannot be separated from value and price theory, because in a money economy incomes arise through the pricing of goods and productive services. Amonn rejects simple appeals to “supply and demand” or cost alone; prices must be understood through marginal utility, marginal cost, functional interdependence, equilibrium tendencies, and the special conditions of factor markets. Wages, rent, and interest require distinct analysis, while entrepreneurial profit is treated as a temporary and uncertain gain from new combinations rather than as ordinary factor income.
Money, credit, and foreign trade extend the same framework. Money is defined by its general exchange function, and its value is handled through a limited quantity-theoretical analysis rather than moralized monetary commentary. Credit transfers present command over goods, facilitates payments and capital formation, yet also introduces instability. Foreign trade is explained by comparative costs: nations gain because relative cost differences allow a more productive international division of labor.
Amonn’s dynamic analysis preserves static equilibrium as a tool while refusing to confuse it with actual capitalist movement. Real economic life is a process of adjustment, disturbance, expansion, crisis, contraction, and renewed transformation. The same caution shapes his discussion of population: Malthus is criticized for overgeneralization, but the relation between population growth and subsistence remains a genuine theoretical problem.
The final part turns to economic policy, where Amonn’s decisive distinction is between ends and means. Science cannot validate ultimate goals as binding; it can only test their compatibility and the suitability of proposed instruments.
Über Ziele als Ziele gibt es keine wissenschaftlichen Aussagen.
English translation: About ends as ends there can be no scientific statements.
Economic policy therefore concerns the means of increasing popular welfare through production and distribution, especially by influencing prices within a market order. Yet Amonn refuses both laissez-faire dogma and collectivist certainty. On the choice between individualistic and collectivistic organization, he argues that experience does not permit a definitive scientific verdict. Written amid the legacies of war economy and planning debates, the book teaches economics as historically informed, conceptually exact, and theoretically rigorous judgment about practical problems.
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