Eugen Peter Schwiedland · 1921
Eugen Peter Schwiedland’s signed review presents Lenz’s proposal to subject international economic competition to legal regulation. Its argument moves from the coercive instruments of national trade policy to the common needs that should govern economic relations among peoples.
Aggressive Methoden der Wirtschaftspolitik haben nun alle Großmächte ausgebildet: Schutzzölle, Kampfzölle, Ausfuhrprämien, Ausfuhr zu Schleuderpreisen — Maßregeln, welche die Macht der Kartelle, der Trusts und der Interessengemeinschaften gesteigert haben.
English translation: All the great powers have now developed aggressive methods of economic policy: protective tariffs, retaliatory tariffs, export subsidies, exports at cut-rate prices—measures that have increased the power of cartels, trusts, and associations of common interests.
This diagnosis connects interstate rivalry with the strengthening of concentrated economic power. Tariffs and export incentives appear not merely as instruments of national prosperity but as means of establishing unequal relations. The review describes the resulting opposition between economically dominant and subordinated peoples as a threat to Western civilization. Lenz’s proposed response is therefore a legal ordering of national participation in international economic activity.
Das Ziel wäre, die Wirtschaftspolitik der einzelnen Völker den gemeinsamen Bedürfnissen aller unterzuordnen.
English translation: The aim would be to subordinate the economic policies of individual peoples to the common needs of all.
The conditional formulation states a normative aim, not an accomplished institutional settlement. Its practical principle concerns national surpluses: quantities of raw materials, food, labor, and manufactured goods exceeding domestic requirements should serve the common good. The proposal thus limits unrestricted national disposal without simply disregarding domestic needs. Schwiedland’s presentation makes the relation between national provision and international obligation central: economic power is to be constrained by duties toward a wider community, rather than left to competition among states.
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