Felix Somary’s book is a single-author, lecture-derived work of political economy and world-historical diagnosis. Its sixteen chapters move from liberalism and socialism, through Britain, the United States, continental Europe, France-Germany, Italy, and Russia, to theoretical chapters on monopoly, wages, state, class, and the relation between free and organized economy. Its central claim is that the war transformed not only balances, currencies, and trade routes, but the very axes of economic politics: state construction, market scale, world-power position, and class formation now matter more than inherited party labels.
Die beiden ökonomischen Weltanschauungen, die von vorgestern und die von gestern, genügen der Wirklichkeit nicht mehr, ihre Anhänger sind heute Vertreter nationaler Interessenparteien.
English translation: The two economic worldviews—that of the day before yesterday and that of yesterday—no longer suffice for reality; their adherents are today the representatives of national interest parties.
Somary’s first move is to de-universalize both doctrines. Liberalism began as an international program of free movement; socialism inherited free trade and free migration in theory. After 1918, both become national, protectionist, and interest-bound. This explains the book’s structure: it proceeds not by abstract doctrine but by large political-economic spaces and their ability to organize credit, labor, production, and markets.
The British chapters present decline as loss of liberal function. England had been world trader, banker, carrier, insurer, and model of open access; after the war it faces depression, indebtedness to America, imperial tensions, Labour’s rise, and a turn toward organization and public control.
Damals bewunderte man England als die geniale Löserin der Probleme, heute erscheint es uns als Land der ungelösten Probleme.
English translation: In those days England was admired as the ingenious solver of problems; today it appears to us as the land of unsolved problems.
By contrast, the United States has crossed from continental-colonial power to world power. Somary emphasizes the Federal Reserve, New York’s displacement of London, industrial leadership in automobiles, film, and radio, and the pull of speculative capital toward America. Yet this is not old liberalism: America is protectionist, monopolistic, stabilizing, and increasingly closed to mass immigration.
The continental European argument is the book’s political center. Somary sees Europe weakened less by poverty than by fragmentation: tariff walls, national procurement, migration controls, weak capital markets, and small-state nationalism prevent efficient use of Europe’s remaining advantages—qualified labor, technical intelligence, and dense industrial capacity.
Das Europa von heute ist eine Karikatur dessen, was es sein sollte.
English translation: The Europe of today is a caricature of what it ought to be.
From this follows his boldest proposal, a Franco-German economic union. France has capital, monetary stability, and a relatively balanced social structure; Germany has labor, industry, and acute need for long-term credit. Reparations could become not merely punishment but a financial bridge binding French savers to German solvency.
Bei der gegenwärtigen Situation Europas sind die zwei wirtschaftlich stärksten Staaten Frankreich und Deutschland. Nur durch ihre Zusammenfassung kann das wirtschaftliche Problem Europas gelöst werden.
English translation: In Europe's present situation, the two economically strongest states are France and Germany. Only by their joint action can Europe's economic problem be solved.
Russia is treated as a limiting case rather than a model. Somary separates the peasant land revolution from Bolshevik industrial rule and argues that Soviet planning cannot abolish the economic problems it denounces: profit, capital accumulation, price relations, and incentives return under other names. Since industrialization requires agricultural surplus and purchasing power, a policy that crushes the peasant undermines its own base.
Der Bauer wird nur unter zwei Voraussetzungen arbeiten: wenn sein Eigentum gesichert ist und wenn er auch eine Gegenleistung für das, was er erarbeitet hat, erhält.
English translation: The peasant will only work under two conditions: if his property is secure and if he also receives a return for what he has produced.
The later chapters generalize these diagnoses. Monopoly is not inherently socialist; it is shared by trusts, state enterprises, and modern big industry. Somary’s sharpest observation is that the large capitalist organizer and the socialist planner converge in their wish to stabilize production and free management from small owners and shareholders.
Der Großunternehmer von heute steht dem Sozialismus viel näher als dem Bürgertum, seine Aktionäre nicht ausgeschlossen.
English translation: The large-scale entrepreneur of today stands much closer to socialism than to the bourgeoisie—his shareholders not excluded.
The conclusion rejects both Manchester liberalism and generalized state monopoly. Free competition supplies selection, initiative, and calculability; organized economy is superior only where production and demand are stable. The necessary future is mixed, not doctrinaire.
Nur im Zusammenwirken beider Wirtschaftsformen kann die höchste Leistungsfähigkeit der Wirtschaft erreicht werden.
English translation: Only through the cooperation of both forms of economic organization can the highest efficiency of the economy be attained.
The book’s relevance lies in its early diagnosis of American financial hegemony, British imperial strain, European economic miniaturization, and the limits of Soviet autarky. Its normative aim is class reconciliation through productivity, open opportunity, and large markets—not equality through bureaucratic monopoly.
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