Carl Menger · 1884
Menger’s Irrthümer continues the methodological dispute opened by his Untersuchungen über die Methode and is a central document of the Methodenstreit. Its immediate occasion is Gustav Schmoller’s critical review, but its larger target is the “historical school” insofar as it treats historical inquiry not as an aid to economics but as economics itself. Menger’s main thesis is that political economy can be reformed only by recovering its own questions and methods, while making disciplined use of history, statistics, psychology, and other auxiliary sciences.
Die Reform einer Wissenschaft vermag nur aus ihr selbst, nur aus den Tiefen ihrer eigenen Ideenkreise hervorzugehen
English translation: The reform of a science can proceed only from within itself, only from the depths of its own circles of ideas.
The sixteen letters move from personal defense to methodological reconstruction. The first two justify answering even shallow criticism: such exchanges expose confusions that otherwise remain implicit. From the third letter onward, Menger clarifies the distinct aims of historical, theoretical, and practical social sciences. Historians and statisticians study concrete peoples, states, institutions, and developments; theorists study forms and laws; practical sciences formulate maxims for purposive action.
die „Erscheinungsformen“ und die „Gesetze“
English translation: the "phenomenal forms" and the "laws"
This distinction is the book’s conceptual core. Menger does not deny the value of history; he denies its sovereignty. Economic history and statistics are indispensable, but they are not identical with political economy. The historicist error is a category mistake, intensified by the scarcity of scholarly labor: when economists devote themselves almost exclusively to historical monographs, theory decays.
die Geschichte der Volkswirthschaft kein Theil, sondern eine Hilfswissenschaft der politischen Oekonomie
English translation: the history of the national economy is not a part, but an auxiliary science, of political economy
Menger therefore presents himself not as an enemy of historical inquiry but as an opponent of its monopoly. His defense is methodological pluralism ordered by task: each science has its own object, and confusion among them produces dilettantism rather than reform.
Nicht ich trage die „Scheuleder wissenschaftlicher Arbeitstheilung“.
English translation: It is not I who wear the "blinkers of scientific division of labour."
Against Schmoller’s demand for a vast historical “understructure” before theory can advance, Menger argues that no exhaustive economic history could ever be completed, and that theory cannot wait upon infinite empirical accumulation. Even more, history is not the exclusive empirical basis of economics. Theoretical economics must also begin from ordinary experience of individual action, motives, purposes, and constraints, since social phenomena arise from the interaction of individual economies.
Die complicirten Erscheinungen der Volkswirthschaft sind vorwiegend das Ergebnis des Contactes individualwirthschaftlicher Bestrebungen
English translation: The complex phenomena of the national economy are predominantly the result of the contact of individual economic endeavours.
This is also where Menger defends the “exact” direction of theory. Its task is not to reproduce empirical reality in all its complexity, but to isolate simple typical elements and derive laws of their connection. This does not abolish empirical research; it explains why historical description alone cannot yield economic theory.
die realen Erscheinungen der Volkswirthschaft auf ihre einfachsten streng typischen Elemente zurückzuführen
English translation: to reduce the real phenomena of the national economy to their simplest, strictly typical elements
The same anti-historicist argument governs Menger’s treatment of policy and finance. Practical sciences cannot be replaced by narratives of past policy, because action confronts new situations and changing technical, moral, and institutional conditions. The historian may instruct, but cannot rule the practical sciences as sole authority.
der „rückwärts gekehrte Prophet“
English translation: the "prophet turned backwards"
Menger’s sharpest formulation comes in his account of the historical school’s decline from theory into annotated narrative. What began as theory enriched by history becomes, in his view, historical material pretending to be theory.
Theorie! — Theorie verbrämt mit historisch-statistischen Notizen und durchbrochen von historischen Excursen! — Blosse Notizen und historische Excurse mit dem Anspruch, für eine Theorie zu gelten!
English translation: Theory! — Theory trimmed with historical-statistical notes and broken up by historical excursuses! — Mere notes and historical excursuses with the pretension of passing for a theory!
Letters ten through thirteen extend the critique to Schmoller’s wish to “raise” practical economics and finance into theoretical sciences. Menger insists that practical sciences are not inferior “recipe books”; they are disciplines concerned with principles of effective action and must be grounded in theory, not dissolved into it.
die praktischen Wissenschaften bedürfen der „Erhebung“ zu Theorien nicht
English translation: the practical sciences do not require any "elevation" to theories
The later letters return to Schmoller’s methods, accusing him of distortion, oversimplification, and political labeling. The work’s continuing importance lies in Menger’s disciplinary architecture: history, theory, and practice are mutually useful but not interchangeable. Irrthümer is thus a defense of autonomous economic theory against historicism, while still preserving history as an essential auxiliary to a universal science of economic phenomena.
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