Richard Schüller’s monograph examines the practical consequences of the historical school’s rejection of general economic principles. Extending methodological criticism into economic and fiscal policy, it asks whether close attention to historical circumstances actually produces sounder judgments. Its opening establishes the scope of the dispute:
Der einseitige Historismus in der deutschen Nationalökonomie hat sich nicht nur auf dem Gebiete der theoretischen Forschung, sondern auch auf praktischem Gebiete, auf dem der Volkswirthschafts- und Finanzpolitik geltend gemacht.
English translation: One-sided historicism in German political economy has made itself felt not only in theoretical research but also in the practical sphere of economic and fiscal policy.
Schüller’s central objection is that historical particularism can privilege inherited institutions without supplying criteria for judging them. His three-part argument moves from classical political economy and its German opponents, through the historical school’s nineteenth-century development, to a comparison of policy methods. Throughout, methodological disagreements are tested against positions on emancipation, commerce, taxation, and labour.
The first part places classical liberalism within struggles against feudal and mercantilist restrictions. Internal customs barriers, compulsory labour, guild privileges, and patrimonial jurisdiction provide the institutional setting for demands for reform. Concrete burdens matter more here than abstract declarations of freedom:
Salz war mit einer Abgabe von 300 Prozent, Leder mit 10, Seife mit 20—25, Kerzen waren mit 15 Prozent ihres durchschnittlichen Marktpreises belegt.
English translation: Salt was subject to a levy of 300 percent, leather to 10, soap to 20–25, and candles to 15 percent of their average market price.
Such evidence makes fiscal arrangements part of the explanation of economic constraint. Smith’s contribution, in Schüller’s account, was to explain how institutions affected prices, incentives, and the movement of labour and capital. German classical economists—including Kraus, Lotz, Jakob, Rau, and Nebenius—adapted general arguments to particular conditions. Their commitment to emancipation and economic integration could accommodate regulation, public provision, and transitional safeguards.
Schüller distinguishes this combination of principle and empirical judgment from both systematic reaction and historical compromise. Haller and Adam Müller defended hierarchy through coherent counter-principles. Earlier historical writers instead combined liberal, feudal, and mercantilist commitments without resolving their tensions. Appeals to acquired rights and local circumstances could consequently impede reforms such as compulsory redemption of peasant obligations. The apparently moderate position was therefore not politically neutral.
Labour relations likewise reveal why inherited regulation cannot simply be equated with protection. The account of wage assessments identifies a striking asymmetry:
Durch die Lohntaxen „wird nicht verboten unter dem Taxpreise, aber wohl darüber Arbeit zu bezahlen“⁷).
English translation: Through the wage assessments, “it is not forbidden to pay for work below the assessed rate, but it is forbidden to pay above it”⁷).
The distinction directs attention to whose freedom a rule restricts and whose interests it protects. It also reinforces Schüller’s insistence that institutional detail must inform, rather than replace, an explicit evaluative argument.
The second part does not turn the defence of classical economics into an endorsement of Manchester liberalism. Schüller credits German free traders with advancing economic unification while criticizing their neglect of social problems and their reduction of classical analysis to optimism about private enrichment. List’s industrial and railway advocacy receives recognition, but his polemics helped identify Smith with later laissez-faire dogmatism.
Roscher, Knies, and Hildebrand represent the ascendancy of historical description over theory and prescription. The younger historical school’s interest in social reform did not, Schüller argues, fully overcome this limitation. His treatment of Schmoller contrasts reformist aspirations with restrictive positions on insurance, worker protection, and union recognition, as well as support for indirect taxation and anti-socialist legislation. Descriptive scholarship and reformist language could thus coexist with practical caution that governments themselves sometimes exceeded.
The final methodological comparison seeks to reunite principled and context-sensitive inquiry. General principles provide direction but cannot exhaust particular cases; historical investigation establishes circumstances but cannot by itself rank competing objectives. Schüller recommends recovering the classical conjunction of these approaches, not reproducing every classical prescription. Contemporary social problems require new answers grounded in both explicit commitments and discriminating empirical analysis. The book’s governing contention is that methodological choices shape the interests policy protects: an accumulation of exceptions cannot substitute for justified priorities.
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