Karl-Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, Vom Nationalreichthum (1883)

In this lecture-based economic essay, published in Deutsche Rundschau, Inama-Sternegg asks what makes a nation wealthy and why national wealth should be pursued. He moves from a distinction between individual and collective purposes through a history of economic doctrines to his own account of productive excellence, saving, and rent. Economics matters because material provision serves higher human ends; abstraction is therefore necessary to understand the forces beneath everyday economic appearances. Wealth is neither an unconditional good nor simply an accumulation of possessions. Its national significance depends on the tasks it enables a people to fulfil.

An individual may live worthily with little property or pursue riches within legal and moral limits. Neither choice determines that person’s contribution to civilization. A nation, however, cannot choose its obligations with the same freedom. Its continued existence and cultural development demand material resources:

Darum kann auch sein Reichthum nie in etwas Anderem bestehen, als eben in den materiellen Mitteln für diese Aufgaben.

English translation: Its wealth, therefore, can never consist in anything other than the material means for these tasks.

This distinction overturns the analogy between a wealthy rentier and a wealthy nation. National riches cannot legitimately mean release from work into effortless enjoyment: collective life requires continuing exertion. Spain’s dependence on American treasure illustrates, for Inama-Sternegg, the danger of consuming what others produce; its commercially active rivals eventually acquired both its wealth and its power. Yet accumulation also has a limit. Wealth exceeding reasonable collective purposes becomes purposeless and potentially destructive, as his example of Rome suggests. National enrichment is thus a political obligation, but one bounded by the ends it serves.

The historical argument explains how this obligation acquired its modern form. Inama-Sternegg represents ancient states as seeking economic sufficiency through conquest and territorial enlargement, and medieval communities as organizing provision within comparatively closed circles. The age of discoveries made international economic relations central. Wealth now meant not only enough for domestic needs but more than other nations possessed. This comparative ambition encouraged mercantilism’s pursuit of advantageous exchange. When trading partners resisted one-sided gains, industrial mercantilism turned toward domestic manufacturing, export competitiveness, and replacement of imports. It recognized productive activity more clearly, but continued to treat the world’s wealth largely as a fixed quantity whose shares nations contested.

Physiocracy redirected attention toward internal resources. Inama-Sternegg connects its emergence with opposition to court politics, feudal burdens, and intrusive economic regulation. Its distinctive claim was that nature supplies a net addition to goods, whereas manufacture changes their form and commerce their location. Land therefore appeared as the source of surplus after wages and interest. He rejects the idea that physiocracy simply negated mercantilism: both doctrines sought conditions yielding returns beyond ordinary production costs.

Nur bevorzugte, womöglich ausschließende Productions- oder Absatzverhältnisse erzeugen Renten, nur durch Renten kann sich Reichthum bilden und vermehren.

English translation: Only privileged, if possible exclusive, conditions of production or sale generate rents; only through rents can wealth be formed and increased.

“Rent” is the essay’s conceptual hinge. It includes exceptional gains from advantageous production or market positions, not merely income from land. Mercantilism pursued commercial advantages; physiocracy located a general source of advantage in land’s increasing scarcity relative to demand. Their persistence, despite theoretical criticism, consequently reflects more than inherited prejudice: each grasped part of the problem of surplus formation.

Adam Smith supplies the indispensable synthesis by identifying national labour as the source of provision across agriculture, industry, and commerce. Division of labour and exchange make specialized activity useful to society, while responsibility and competition stimulate effort. Inama-Sternegg nevertheless distinguishes this powerful general principle from a sufficient explanation of enrichment:

Dem berühmten Buche „über den Nationalreichthum“ fehlt gerade der Abschluß — die Theorie des Nationalreichthums selbst.

English translation: The famous book “on national wealth” lacks precisely its concluding completion—the theory of national wealth itself.

Smith explains economic interdependence without completing the theory of rents. The productivity of labour alone does not establish how every branch of activity can contribute to national wealth: returns vary with occupations, supporting productive resources, and institutional arrangements. What remains necessary is an account of conditions that a nation can create through its own effort, rather than receive solely from natural endowments or political privilege.

Inama-Sternegg finds the answer in superior production combined with economical use of resources. Technical improvement releases labour and capital from meeting existing needs, making further development possible. An innovating firm’s advantage may disappear when competitors adopt its methods, but their general adoption remains a lasting gain for society. Saving likewise means maximizing the useful effect of labour and productive means, not suppressing consumption or renouncing all luxury.

Durch Sparsamkeit allein kann ein Volk nicht reich werden; aber es ist gewiß, daß nur sparsame Völker reich geworden sind.

English translation: Through thrift alone a nation cannot become wealthy; but it is certain that only thrifty nations have become wealthy.

Saving preserves productive achievements as capital; it cannot substitute for achievement itself. The concluding argument therefore makes distinctive performance and progress within the community of nations the basis of enrichment:

Solcher Fortschritt, solche Extraleistung lohnt sich selbst durch die Extragewinne, welche das Volk erzielt, durch seine Renten.

English translation: Such progress, such exceptional performance rewards itself through the extra gains that the nation obtains, through its rents.

The essay’s contribution is to connect national wealth with cultivated productive capacities rather than treasure, land alone, or labour considered indiscriminately. Its historical synthesis turns the older search for exclusive advantages into a programme of excellence, efficiency, and capital formation. International comparison remains essential, but enrichment rests ultimately on what a nation contributes through its own capabilities—and on whether the resulting surplus advances its collective purposes.