Gustav Adolf Groß · 1931
Gustav Adolf Groß’s 1931 book is a single-author theoretical monograph: a sustained critique of Werner Sombart’s Der moderne Kapitalismus from Robert Liefmann’s “sozialindividualistische” economics. Its scope is deliberately narrow. Groß does not test Sombart’s archival history or philosophy, but isolates the theoretical foundations that Sombart builds into his universal history of European capitalism.
Unser Interesse gilt nicht dem Historiker, sondern nur dem Wirtschaftstheoretiker Sombart.
English translation: Our interest is not in Sombart the historian, but only in Sombart the economic theorist.
The argument unfolds in three chapters and a concluding conceptual audit. Chapter I rejects Sombart’s opposition between need-satisfaction and acquisitive striving. For Groß, money-seeking is not a biological drive, ethical deformation, or extra-economic “spirit” invading ordinary provision; it is an intermediate economic purpose within planning. Money must therefore be understood not as gold, hoard, or fetish, but as the abstract medium that allows plans to remain revisable.
Das Geld ist Kaufkraftübertragungs- und Schatzbildungsmittel, ist „abstrakte Rechnungseinheit“ (Liefmann) und gleichzeitig Tauschmittel.
English translation: Money is a means of transferring purchasing power and of hoarding, is an "abstract unit of account" (Liefmann), and at the same time a medium of exchange.
This permits Groß’s central reversal: economy is not primarily the production of goods, but the formal ordering of satisfactions and sacrifices. Behind monetary gain stands the psychical principle of maximizing “Konsumertrag,” the excess of anticipated pleasure over anticipated displeasure. Money matters because it lowers the losses caused by changes in plan; it postpones concrete commitment while preserving access to many possible satisfactions.
Das Wirtschaftsprinzip hat formalen Charakter.
English translation: The economic principle is formal in character.
Chapter II turns against Sombart’s institutional theory of “Wirtschaftssysteme.” Sombart treats Eigenwirtschaft, Handwerk, Kapitalismus, Bauernwirtschaft, Genossenschaft, Gemeinwirtschaft, and socialism as historical organizations or cultural bodies. Groß argues that this turns classifications into agents. It also blinds Sombart to natural exchange inside supposedly self-sufficient economies: labor services, payments in kind, usufruct, and obligations already bind households, estates, villages, and crafts into exchange relations. The real unit is not the Betrieb or “system,” but the planning subject.
Wirtschaftssubjekte allein stehen im Tauschverkehr.
English translation: Only economic subjects engage in exchange.
From this follows a different view of market order. Exchange is not the expression of a single institutional idea and not the action of capitalism as a historical subject. It is the continuous adaptation of individual plans to one another through buying, selling, competition, and revised expectations.
Der Tauschverkehr hat keine Form im Sombartschen Sinne.
English translation: Exchange has no form in Sombart's sense.
Chapter III criticizes Sombart’s capital theory and its Marxian residues. Groß argues that Sombart confuses money magnitudes with goods quantities, and production with exchange. Technical processes transform materials into products; exchange substitutes one economic means for another. Capital therefore cannot be defined by the capitalist enterprise or by physical “production goods.” It is money employed as a means to acquire more money.
Kapital nennen wir das zum Gelderwerbsmittel gemachte Geld.
English translation: We call capital the money that has been made into a means of acquiring money.
This is Groß’s decisive separation of technique and economy. Technical thought compares concrete means for a given purpose; economic thought compares costs and yields. Production technique is only the object to which economic calculation refers. Capitalism is thus not essentially a productive force but a heightened form of commerce governed by rentability.
Dieses Rentabilitätsprinzip ist nichts anderes als das quantitative Abbild des psychisch-abstrakten Wirtschaftsprinzips.
English translation: This principle of profitability is nothing other than the quantitative counterpart of the psychically abstract economic principle.
The concluding section uses “Rationalisierung,” “Produktivität,” and “Versachlichung” to expose the stakes of the critique. Groß denies that double-entry bookkeeping, technical standardization, or business organization prove a new rational human type or an autonomous economic organism. Calculation is practical ordering within exchange, not natural-scientific quantification of a hidden economic substance.
The work’s relevance lies in its systematic dismantling of Sombart’s grand categories—spirit, institution, productivity, capitalist organism—and its replacement of them with a theory of individual planning and social interdependence. Economic order is not designed from above; it emerges from the repeated use of an individual principle under exchange.
Weil so ein sozialer Zusammenhang aus der Wirkungsweise eines Individualprinzips erklärt wird, nennen wir die hier vorgetragene (Liefmannsche) Wirtschaftsauffassung eine sozialindividualistische.
English translation: Because a social interconnection is thus explained by the operation of an individual principle, we call the conception of the economy presented here (that of Liefmann) a social-individualist one.
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