Robert Meyer on Philippovich’s Grundriss der politischen Oekonomie (1893)

Robert Meyer’s review of Eugen von Philippovich’s first volume, Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre, assesses both a major teaching achievement and the conceptual divisions through which economics organizes its subject. His governing judgment is strongly favourable: Philippovich has made a rapidly changing, methodologically divided science accessible without constructing another partisan system. Meyer nevertheless tests that synthesis against problems of classification, distribution, and economic power.

The review begins by explaining why a satisfactory textbook had become so difficult to write. Scientific controversy generates discoveries but obstructs the consolidation that teaching requires:

Das Lehrbuch soll einen Schatz bereits gesicherten Wissens dem Lernenden übergeben, es kann auf streitige Meinungen nur selten eingehen, und die Controverse fast nie erschöpfen.

English translation: The textbook should convey to the learner a store of already established knowledge; it can only rarely address disputed opinions and almost never exhaust the controversy.

Philippovich’s restraint therefore signifies more than personal modesty: the possibility of such a textbook suggests that the discipline has reached a degree of consolidation. Meyer praises its clear language and impartial use of different schools. Its organizing commitments nevertheless remain theoretical, giving systematic relationships priority over historical sequence while acknowledging historical research.

Meyer follows the volume from its conceptual introduction through the conditions of economic development, production and acquisition, exchange, and income and consumption. He also singles out the concluding fifth book on economic parties—individualism, socialism, and social reform—for its unusually lucid and impartial exposition. A projected second volume would address economic policy and public finance.

The introduction supplies the review’s central critical problem. Philippovich distinguishes exchange-based organization, founded on division of labour, separate ownership, and contractual freedom, from communal organization. Meyer accepts the distinction’s expository usefulness but disputes any implication that conflicts between individual and collective interests arise exclusively from exchange:

Finden wir denn nicht innerhalb gemeinwirtschaftlicher Organisationen dieselben Aeusserungen der Selbstsucht und des übertriebenen Eigennutzes, wie innerhalb der Verkehrserscheinungen?

English translation: Do we not find within communal economic organizations the same manifestations of selfishness and excessive self-interest as within the phenomena of exchange?

Taxation, the private exploitation of public institutions, and distribution within a communal economy all present comparable difficulties. Meyer thus separates organizational arrangements from more general problems of human motivation. His criticism does not amount to an unqualified defence of markets: he welcomes Philippovich’s recognition of unequal bargaining power in labour contracts and of motives beyond self-interest.

The detailed examination repeatedly asks whether a phenomenon belongs where the system places it. Division of labour is largely a result of economic development, not simply one of its conditions; valuation, measurement, and transport also occur without exchange. Meyer praises the accessible presentation of Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and Wieser’s value theory, while regretting the omission of Böhm-Bawerk’s account of capital and production time. His objections to price theory concern neglected buyer monopolies, price-setting procedures, and the treatment of differing production costs.

Distribution brings these classificatory concerns into direct contact with Meyer’s own income theory. Against treating income as the purchasing means for everything possessing exchange value, he insists:

Wenn Häuser, Landgüter, Wohnungsausstattungen, Warenlager, Fabriken u. s. w. in den Verkehr kommen, sind es doch die Vermögensbestände und nicht die Einkommen, welche hier die Kaufkraft ausmachen.

English translation: When houses, landed estates, household furnishings, stocks of goods, factories, and so forth enter exchange, it is stocks of wealth, not incomes, that constitute purchasing power here.

The distinction makes capital replacement an indispensable part of distribution and exposes the importance of property ownership for entrepreneurial activity. Meyer likewise applauds Philippovich’s candid account of workers’ restricted capacity to accumulate wealth and the resulting concentration of capital.

His final reservations concern credit and crises. Credit can create monetary demand and help spread crises, not merely facilitate exchange or prevent disruption. Although Philippovich identifies essential crisis mechanisms, Meyer finds their frequency and human consequences insufficiently emphasized. The review’s lasting interest lies in this combination of pedagogical generosity and analytical vigilance: systematic clarity deserves praise, but neither tidy categories nor compressed exposition should obscure economic interdependence, unequal power, or social suffering.