Viktor Mataja, Einleitung (1931 [i.e. 1930])

Viktor Mataja’s introductory chapter establishes the conceptual framework for an edited textbook on economic policy. Its five sections define the field and its relationship to economics, trace competing doctrines of state activity, examine grounds for public intervention, classify policy instruments, and conclude by locating economic policy within the wider conditions of effective government. The guiding argument is that neither unrestricted competition nor unlimited state responsibility supplies an adequate rule. Economic policy requires informed judgment about particular circumstances, balancing public purposes against the value of private initiative and the limitations of government.

Mataja initially defines Volkswirtschaftspolitik as the state’s ordering and directing influence on the national economy. Municipalities and other territorial authorities also belong within its practical study, although their geographically restricted responsibilities distinguish them from government acting for the whole nation. Private organizations occupy a qualified position: the economic consequences of conducting their own business do not themselves constitute economic policy, but deliberate initiatives serving broader purposes—such as a professional association establishing a training institution—can do so. These activities nevertheless remain subject to state supervision, regulation, support, or toleration. Policy scholarship must therefore examine institutions, measures, and outcomes while explaining the economic phenomena on which they operate. Its connection with economic theory is substantive, not merely administrative.

The historical survey organizes economic doctrines around their understanding of state power. Mercantilism receives a political interpretation rather than being reduced to money and trade-balance theories: it belongs to the consolidation of the modern state under absolutist rulers, with economic activity directed toward strengthening sovereign power. Physiocracy counterposes natural order, freedom, and property to restrictive government. Adam Smith represents economic liberalism, but Mataja resists treating him as an unconditional opponent of intervention. Defence, impartial justice, public works, and education remain public responsibilities; Smith also accepts protections for workers, including prohibition of payment in goods. Subsequent liberal, conservative, protectionist, social-policy, and socialist currents demonstrate continuing disagreement over government’s legitimate scope. Mataja mentions planning and Wagner’s thesis of expanding public activity without settling their claims; wartime and postwar experience nevertheless reveal how extraordinary circumstances enlarge the need for intervention.

The third section supplies the chapter’s strongest conceptual move. Government and economy cannot be treated as independently existing entities whose connection is optional: the state provides the legal and organizational foundations of economic society.

Fraglich kann also nur sein, inwiefern sich der Staat über diese grundlegenden Aufgaben hinaus für die Volkswirtschaft betätigen soll und kann.

English translation: The only question, therefore, can be how far the state should and can act for the national economy beyond these fundamental tasks.

This shifts the inquiry from whether government belongs in economic life to which additional activities are warranted. Mataja deliberately confines the discussion to practical measures connected with the existing social order. Intervention can regulate or support private activity, or take the form of public economic undertakings. Its justifications include protecting children and dependent persons, safeguarding contemporaries and future generations against destructive resource use, and securing cooperation where voluntary agreements prove insufficient. Collective needs, economically advantageous monopolies, and conflicts between social groups provide further occasions for public action.

Importantly, legal restraint need not simply diminish freedom. Mataja’s example of shop closing and Sunday rest shows how collective regulation may release participants from competitive pressures that prevent them from acting independently.

Auch ist zu erwägen, daß keineswegs jede staatliche Regelung eine gleichwertige Einengung der persönlichen Freiheit bedeutet oder zum mindesten bedeuten muß: die gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zur Einführung von Ladenschluß und Sonntagsruhe beim Handels- und Gewerbebetrieb mögen auch bei beteiligten Unternehmern — vielleicht nicht bei allen, aber doch bei einer Gruppe — nicht als ein Zwang, sondern sogar als Befreiung von einem Zwange empfunden werden.

English translation: It must also be considered that by no means every state regulation entails, or at least must entail, a corresponding restriction of personal freedom: the statutory provisions introducing shop closing and Sunday rest in commerce and industry may also be experienced by the entrepreneurs concerned—perhaps not by all, but certainly by a group—not as compulsion, but even as liberation from compulsion.

Yet these arguments do not authorize indefinite expansion of government. Individuals possess valuable knowledge of their own wants, and initiative and competition serve the community as well as private actors. Public authority is neither infallibly just nor immune to outside influence. Public enterprises risk bureaucratic rigidity; regulation may encourage evasion, burden conscientious participants disproportionately, or produce unintended consequences, such as goods disappearing under price controls. Defective legislation adds uncertainty and conflict.

Sache einer richtigen Volkswirtschaftspolitik ist es, unter den sich kreuzenden Erwägungen die den besonderen Verhältnissen und Zielen am meisten entsprechende Linie herauszufinden.

English translation: The task of sound economic policy is to find, among the intersecting considerations, the course most appropriate to the particular circumstances and objectives.

The fourth section translates this contextual approach into a broad repertoire of instruments: legal rules, administrative services, public infrastructure and enterprises, finance, persuasion, and international agreements. Taxes both fund action and influence economic choices; their distribution and aggregate burden matter alongside targeted incentives. Mataja also treats public communication as an instrument distinct from coercion:

Einfluß auf die Menschen und ihr Verhalten auszuüben ist nicht nur durch Zwang (Vorschriften) möglich, sondern auch durch die Einwirkung auf ihr Denken und Empfinden, also durch Verbreitung bestimmter Vorstellungen.

English translation: It is possible to influence people and their behaviour not only through compulsion (regulations), but also by influencing their thinking and feelings, that is, by disseminating particular ideas.

Here “propaganda” encompasses instruction, exhibitions, recommendations, appeals, and advertising-like techniques intended to shape economic conduct. International agreements, meanwhile, stabilize domestic commitments and enable influence over conditions abroad that unilateral legislation cannot reach. The conclusion widens the perspective once more: sound administration, peaceful political conditions, foreign relations, and sustainable public finances shape economic development beyond narrowly economic measures. The chapter’s relevance lies in this combination of institutional breadth and practical restraint: policy is an indispensable public function whose instruments and limits must be judged together.