Julius von Gans-Ludassy · 1893
This file is a single-author methodological monograph, the first part of a larger system. Its scope is foundational rather than applied: Gans-Ludassy tries to establish an autonomous “ökonomistische Methodologie” for economics as the science of purposive human action. The book opens with an expansive claim that economics must become the organizing science of modern thought:
Die Philosophie der Zukunft ist Oekonomik.
English translation: The philosophy of the future is economics.
This does not mean that economics should remain a branch of philosophy. On the contrary, the work’s first major move is to detach economics from speculative metaphysics and from merely moralized doctrines of welfare. The struggle for existence is reinterpreted psychologically as a struggle over satisfaction, happiness, and purposive striving:
Der Kampf ums Dasein, welcher die Evolution der Lebewesen vermittelt, ist, von seiner psychologischen Seite angesehen, ein Kampf ums Glück.
English translation: The struggle for existence, which mediates the evolution of living beings, is, viewed from its psychological side, a struggle for happiness.
From this premise Gans-Ludassy argues that economics must be autonomous in its principles. A “philosophical economics” is, for him, a contradiction if it means importing alien first principles into economic inquiry:
Eine Oekonomik, welche philosophisch ist, ist demnach eine Pseudoökonomik; eine wissenschaftliche Oekonomik ist vielmehr nur als eine in ihren Principien autonome möglich.
English translation: An economics that is philosophical is accordingly a pseudo-economics; a scientific economics is possible only as one autonomous in its principles.
The middle sections are largely methodological polemic. Gans-Ludassy distinguishes his position from the historical school, from naïve empiricism, and from abstract apriorism. He denies that the newer historical school simply continues evolutionary economics:
Es ist somit ganz falsch, wenn die neuhistorische Schule sich als Fortsetzerin der evolutionistischen betrachtet.
English translation: It is therefore quite mistaken when the neo-historical school regards itself as the continuator of the evolutionist school.
Yet he also refuses to set experience and thought against one another. His “exact-realist” aspiration is analytic, but not anti-empirical: concepts must be clarified, laws formulated, and empirical reality interpreted through them.
Bei tieferer Betrachtung wird sich zeigen, dass Erfahrung und Denken einander nicht feindlich gegenüberstehen, sondern einander vielmehr ergänzen; dies ist dadurch zu erklären, dass sie beide wesensgleich sind.
English translation: On deeper reflection it will emerge that experience and thought do not stand opposed to one another as enemies, but rather complement one another; this is to be explained by the fact that both are essentially of the same nature.
A key conceptual move is his attempt to define economic action through calculation of ends and means. Economic conduct is not merely the possession of goods, the pursuit of wealth, labor, exchange, or traffic; it is purposive comparison of sacrifice and anticipated result:
Er unterwirft die Differenz zwischen dem Werth des Aufwandes und dem Werth desjenigen, das er durch den Aufwand zu erlangen wünscht, einem Calcul und sucht die genannte Differenz zu einer möglichst grossen zu machen.
English translation: He subjects the difference between the value of the outlay and the value of that which he wishes to obtain through the outlay to a calculation, and seeks to make the said difference as large as possible.
The work then turns from general epistemology to the status of laws in economics. Gans-Ludassy separates law, rule, and norm in order to defend the possibility of economic science without reducing it to rigid determinism or loose historical description:
Das Gesetz ist also ein allgemeines Urtheil causalen Inhalts; es hat somit zwei Merkmale, die Allgemeinheit und den Causalnexus.
English translation: The law is therefore a general judgment of causal content; it thus has two marks: generality and the causal nexus.
Rules register regularities that may admit exceptions; laws express causal necessity; norms belong to historical and institutional development. This distinction lets him preserve both development and scientific explanation:
Die Normen entwickeln sich, die Gesetze stehen ausserhalb der Entwicklung; sie sind Urtheile über das sich Entwickelnde.
English translation: Norms develop; laws stand outside development; they are judgments about that which develops.
History therefore has value only when read for lawful development, not as a heap of facts or as a substitute for theory:
Wenn wir an dem Gedanken einer gesetzmäßigen Entwicklung festhalten, so offenbart sich uns der Werth der Geschichte als einer Lehrmeisterin darin, dass sie das Gesetzmäßige in sich birgt.
English translation: If we hold fast to the idea of a lawful development, then the value of history as a teacher reveals itself to us in the fact that it harbors within itself that which is lawful.
The closing movement rejects inherited definitions of economics as too narrow or circular and replaces them with a finalistic definition centered on action, purpose, and “wirtschaftliche Energie.” Economics becomes neither a doctrine of wealth nor a catalog of goods, but a theory of effective purposive conduct:
Die Oekonomik ist daher die Wissenschaft vom Handeln.
English translation: Economics is therefore the science of action.
The book’s relevance lies in this synthesis: evolutionary language, causal law, mass phenomena, historical development, and action-theory are drawn into one methodological project. Gans-Ludassy’s “economic energy” names the capacity of purposive action to organize means toward ends under conditions of calculable sacrifice. The result is an ambitious fin-de-siècle attempt to recast economics as the general science of the purposeful:
Das Ganze aber stellt sich als Wissenschaft vom Zweckmässigen, als Lehre von der wirthschaftlichen Energie dar.
English translation: The whole, however, presents itself as the science of the purposive, as the doctrine of economic energy.
This work was divided into 179 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 179 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian