Richard Schüller, Die klassische Nationalökonomie und ihre Gegner (1895)

Richard Schüller’s 1895 monograph is a historical-methodological defense of classical political economy against the German Historical School. Dedicated to Carl Menger, it argues that Brentano, Hildebrand, Knies, Schmoller and others turned Smith, Say, Ricardo and Malthus into a caricature: abstract, egoistic, indifferent to institutions, and committed to laissez-faire harmony. Schüller’s announced method is forensic rather than merely doctrinal.

Es gilt die Klassiker — Smith, Say, Ricardo, Malthus — gerade in jenen Punkten, in denen sie Gegenstand der heftigsten, und, wie sich herausstellen wird, ganz unberechtigten Angriffe seitens der historischen Schule geworden sind, selbst wieder zum Worte kommen zu lassen.

English translation: It is important to let the classical economists—Smith, Say, Ricardo, Malthus—speak for themselves once again, precisely on those points on which they have been subjected to the most vehement, and, as will become apparent, wholly unjustified attacks from the historical school.

The book proceeds accusation by accusation. Schüller first rejects the claim that the classics ignored time, place, culture and law. He presents Smith as attentive to class formation, religion, colonial policy, taxation, education and legal institutions; Say as sensitive to climate, habits and legislation; Ricardo and Malthus as working with historically differentiated cases. The issue is not whether abstraction occurs, but whether abstraction entails blindness to concrete circumstances. Schüller answers that it does not.

Der von den historischen Volkswirthen gegen die klassische Nationalökonomie erhobene Vorwurf, dass sie die kulturellen, zeitlichen und örtlichen Verhältnisse außer Acht lassen, ist demnach durchaus unbegründet.

English translation: The reproach raised by the historical economists against classical economics, that it disregards cultural, temporal, and local circumstances, is therefore entirely unfounded.

He next addresses the “abstract man” charge. Classical writers, in his reading, constantly distinguish persons by profession, age, property, talent, class, education, bargaining position and national setting. Smith’s famous comparison of philosopher and porter is treated not as a denial of difference, but as an argument that social formation and habit produce much of what later appears natural. Schüller thus turns the historical accusation back on historicism: the classics, he says, were often more historically observant than their critics.

The conceptual center of the work is Schüller’s discussion of motive and interest. He concedes that self-interest is analytically central in exchange, but denies that the classics reduced all action to egoism. They also recognized benevolence, vanity, prudence, ignorance, moral discipline, family attachment and public spirit. For Schüller, the Historical School confuses analytical isolation with psychological absolutism.

In Wahrheit mangelt es den Vertretern des einseitigen Historismus an der zu tiefgreifender Analyse und entsprechender Synthese erforderlichen theoretischen Kraft, und sie verwirren selbst die schon von den Klassikern gewonnenen Erkenntnisse durch verschwommene Betrachtungen.

English translation: In truth, the representatives of one-sided historicism lack the theoretical power required for penetrating analysis and corresponding synthesis, and they themselves obscure the insights already gained by the classical economists through vague reflections.

Schüller also contests the view that classical economics taught a universal harmony of interests. His reconstruction of Smith stresses qualifications and conflicts: merchants against the public, masters against workers, landlords against tenants, colonies against metropoles, monopoly against consumers. “Natural liberty” is therefore not a doctrine that private pursuit always secures public welfare, but an attack on privilege, artificial restriction and policy made for organized interests.

The final section on economic and social policy is the book’s most pointed intervention. Schüller shows the classics endorsing gradual reform, transitional protection, banking regulation, public works, education, technical administration and limits on private liberty where public welfare requires them. Their liberalism is presented as conditional and institutional, not anarchic or indifferent to social need.

Smith, Say, Ricardo, Malthus verkannten nicht die Nothwendigkeit allmähliger Entwicklung und der Berücksichtigung partikulärer Verhältnisse, sie waren nicht der Ansicht, daß das freie Spiel der individuellen Kräfte immer zum allgemeinen Wohle führe, sie wiesen die wirthschafts- und socialpolitische Thätigkeit der öffentlichen Gewalten nicht zurück.

English translation: Smith, Say, Ricardo, and Malthus did not fail to recognize the necessity of gradual development and of taking particular circumstances into account; they did not hold that the free interplay of individual forces always leads to the general welfare; they did not reject economic and social-political activity on the part of the public authorities.

Schüller’s conclusion is double-edged. The classics are not treated as final authorities on every modern social problem, but as thinkers whose actual texts are richer than the historical economists allowed. The monograph is thus a document of the Methodenstreit: it defends theoretical abstraction as compatible with historical specificity, and insists that any historical critique of political economy must begin by reading its predecessors accurately.