Alfred Amonn · 1949
Amonn’s second volume is a scholarly monograph on Sismondi’s later economics, especially the Nouveaux principes d’économie politique. Its scope is not a biography but an exposition and interpretation of doctrine: Sismondi appears as a theorist who breaks with the liberal-optimist equilibrium assumptions of classical political economy and reorients economics toward development, social welfare, and political responsibility.
Amonn’s guiding claim is that Sismondi’s later work remains theoretical, but no longer in the same sense as the abstract system criticized by him. The point is not that Sismondi abandons theory for moralism, but that he changes the object of theory: from harmonious exchange and formal balance to historically unfolding economic life with its conflicts, crises, and injuries.
Es ist durchaus Theorie, was in diesem Werke geboten wird, aber eine Theorie anderer Art als die, die im ersten Werk dargelegt wurde.
English translation: What is offered in this work is thoroughly theory, but a theory of another kind than that set forth in the first work.
This “other” theory is directed against the static liberal model. Amonn presents Sismondi as arguing that the economy cannot be understood simply through equilibrium mechanisms or the aggregation of private interests. The decisive conceptual move is from a theory of automatic order to a theory of social consequences. Economic growth, production, credit, and competition must be judged by their effects on human livelihood, not only by their internal technical success.
Die statische Theorie oder Gleichgewichtstheorie stimmt nicht für die tatsächliche Entwicklung der Wirtschaft.
English translation: The static theory, or equilibrium theory, does not accord with the actual development of the economy.
From this premise follows Sismondi’s critique of liberalism. Amonn emphasizes that Sismondi does not reject prosperity, property, or production as such; rather, he rejects the belief that unregulated pursuit of gain reliably produces general welfare. The market may increase output while worsening insecurity, dependence, or poverty. Thus the “interest of everyone,” when translated into competitive action, can yield a result hostile to the majority.
Wir sähen das «Interesse jedermanns» die Produktion gezwungenermaßen zu einem Ergebnis führen, das «dem Interesse der größten Zahl und vielleicht schließlich dem Interesse aller entschieden entgegengesetzt ist».
English translation: We would see the "interest of each" compelling production to a result that is "decidedly opposed to the interest of the greatest number and perhaps ultimately to the interest of all."
The volume therefore reconstructs Sismondi as a founder or renewer of interventionist political economy. Intervention is not treated as arbitrary state meddling but as the necessary response to a theory that recognizes disequilibrium, unequal vulnerability, and social damage. The legislator’s task is not to impose sameness, but to secure humane conditions across social ranks. Amonn’s formulation makes clear that Sismondi’s social policy is welfare-oriented rather than egalitarian in a simple leveling sense.
Nicht die Gleichheit der Lebensverhältnisse, sondern das Wohlergehen in allen Verhältnissen soll der Gesetzgeber im Auge haben.
English translation: Not equality of conditions of life, but well-being under all conditions is what the legislator ought to have in view.
This also explains the central place of labor and wages. Amonn stresses Sismondi’s refusal to understand wages merely as a market price for units of labor time. Wages are the worker’s means of life; hence labor cannot be fully assimilated to ordinary commodities. This is one of Sismondi’s key departures from classical abstraction and one of the points that gives his economics its social-political force.
Der Lohn sei, sagt Sismondi weiter, «nicht nur eine Entschädigung für die Arbeit, nach ihrer Dauer per Stunde berechnet», sondern «das Einkommen des Armen».
English translation: Wages, Sismondi goes on to say, are "not merely a compensation for labor, calculated by its duration per hour," but "the income of the poor."
The treatment of money and credit extends the same critical method. Amonn notes Sismondi’s concern with the concrete consequences of monetary instruments, not merely their formal equivalence within exchange. The analysis of banknotes, for example, belongs to a broader suspicion of mechanisms that appear neutral but shift burdens and produce unintended systemic effects.
«Die Banknote erzwingt die Ausfuhr der entsprechenden Bargeldmenge.»
English translation: "The banknote compels the export of the corresponding quantity of coin."
The structure of Amonn’s work, as reflected in the volume’s subtitle, moves from the “new principles” to the critique of liberalism, the re-grounding of interventionism, and social policy. Its relevance lies in showing Sismondi as neither a mere precursor of socialism nor a sentimental critic of industrial society, but as a theorist of capitalist development whose central problem is the mismatch between productive expansion and human welfare. Amonn’s Sismondi is important because he relocates political economy in the space between economic law and legislative responsibility: the economy has tendencies, but society must decide whether their human results are tolerable.
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