Engliš’s work is a systematic handbook of national economics, organized as a conceptual ascent from the isolated acting person to exchange, national economy, world economy, and the state. Its main thesis is that economic life cannot be understood as a mere inventory of goods, prices, or institutions: it must be reconstructed from purposes, means, and the ordered relations among them.
Vom Einzelmenschen führt der Weg zur Volks- und Weltwirtschaft.
English translation: From the individual, the path leads to the national and the world economy.
The decisive methodological move is teleological. Engliš defines economic categories by their relation to ends: utility, harm, value, production, and policy all become intelligible only when one asks “for what purpose?” This makes economics neither pure psychology nor simple state doctrine, but a science of purposeful ordering.
Ohne Zweck gibt es keine Nützlichkeit.
English translation: Without a purpose there is no utility.
From this premise, value is not treated as an intrinsic property of things. It is a measured relevance within a purposive scheme, so that the same object may be useful, useless, or harmful depending on the end in view. Engliš’s formulation is abstract but central to the whole architecture of the book:
Der Wert ist der Grad einer bestimmten Eigenschaft, die Quantität einer Qualität.
English translation: Value is the degree of a definite property, the quantity of a quality.
The structure then moves from individual valuation toward production and social coordination. In production Engliš emphasizes that the economic system does not reward technical output as such, but output under conditions of profitability. His discussion of agriculture is especially revealing because he treats it as bound by natural and economic limits at once:
Im gegebenen Wirtschaftssystem gibt es in der Landwirtschaft keine Produktion ohne Rentabilität.
English translation: Within the given economic system there is, in agriculture, no production without profitability.
He contrasts this with industry, where scale and cost tend to behave differently. The comparison lets him show that “production” is not one homogeneous process: agriculture and industry embody different relations between effort, product, and expansion.
Das Verhältnis zwischen dem relativen Produktionsaufwand (der auf die Einheit des Produktes entfällt) und dem Umfang der Produktion ist in der Industrie umgekehrt wie in der Landwirtschaft.
English translation: The relation between the relative expenditure of production (that which falls upon the unit of product) and the scale of production is, in industry, the reverse of what it is in agriculture.
Engliš’s economics is therefore not reducible to marginal calculation alone. It repeatedly turns from formal relations to institutional conditions, especially where distribution is concerned. The division between labor and capital is described within limits set by productivity and organization, but its concrete outcome is decided politically and socially.
Über den wirklichen Anteil von Arbeit und Kapital im Rahmen der angegebenen Grenzen entscheidet die Macht.
English translation: Concerning the actual share of labor and capital within the indicated limits, power decides.
This sentence marks one of the book’s strongest conceptual transitions: after grounding economics in purposive order, Engliš refuses to present social results as automatic harmonies. Exchange, production, and distribution operate through power as well as calculation. The handbook thus joins theoretical analysis to questions of legal form, collective organization, and public authority.
In its later sections the scope widens from national economy to world economy, trade, payments, and money. Engliš distinguishes trade balances from payment balances and warns against simplistic mercantilist readings of imports and exports. The danger is not an unfavorable trade balance as such, but a deeper imbalance in international payments.
Die Passivität der Handelsbilanz ist kein Unglück; eine passive Zahlungsbilanz ist eine sehr ernste Erscheinung, wie wir später noch erklären werden.
English translation: A passive trade balance is no misfortune; a passive balance of payments is a very serious phenomenon, as we shall explain later.
His monetary analysis is similarly practical and anti-nominalist. What matters is not the size or name of the unit, but its stability as a measure for economic coordination.
Ohne Rücksicht auf die Größe der Geldeinheit ist eine Währung gut, wenn sie stabil ist, wenn sie eine stabile Einheit hat.
English translation: Regardless of the size of the monetary unit, a currency is good if it is stable, if it has a stable unit.
The final political-economic movement links world economy to nation and state. Engliš presents national culture and sovereignty as conditions under which economic policy acquires collective meaning. Economic independence, trade policy, and state organization are not merely technical devices; they serve the preservation and development of a national community.
Der Nationalstaat erscheint so als der politische Gipfelpunkt des nationalen Sehnens, da er die Existenz, den Bestand und die Entwicklung der Nation sichert.
English translation: The nation-state thus appears as the political culmination of national aspiration, since it secures the existence, the continuance, and the development of the nation.
The work’s relevance lies in this synthesis. Engliš offers a teleological system of economics in which concepts are defined by ends, markets are embedded in institutions, distribution is shaped by power, and monetary and trade policy are judged by their contribution to stable collective order. Its originality is less in any single doctrine than in the sustained attempt to connect subjective purpose, social organization, and state policy within one national-economic framework.
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