Emil Lederer: Review of Walter Eucken’s Nationalökonomie—wozu? (1938)

Emil Lederer’s signed journal book review presents Eucken’s short work as a politically pointed defense of economic theory. Its practical audience is central to its purpose:

This little book is a plea for economic theory; the author tries to persuade politicians, government officials and businessmen that economics is not obsolete, but that just those who want to regulate the economic system must know its working lest their measures defeat their own purposes.

Lederer situates this plea under the shadow of total war. Comprehensive regulation of production, distribution, capital, and labor encourages confidence in willpower and organization. Against that confidence, Eucken insists that economic systems have their own laws: administrative determination cannot substitute for understanding their operation. The analogy with military planning makes theory a condition of effective intervention, not an argument against intervention itself.

The review moves from this general defense to business-cycle policy. Where such policy is accepted as unavoidable, theoretical ideas should guide it, but must also be tested against actual circumstances. Lederer then identifies the argument’s distinctive target:

It is interesting to see that the argument of the book is not so much aimed at institutionalists and historians as at the powers that hold the German economic system under their sway.

This closing observation gives the review its political emphasis. The issue is less a dispute among economic schools than a warning to governing authorities: regulation risks defeating its purposes when power disregards economic logic.