Eugen Philippovich von Philippsberg, Individuelle Verantwortlichkeit und gegenseitige Hilfe im Wirtschaftsleben (1905)

Delivered on 16 October 1905 upon assuming the rectorship of Vienna University, Philippovich’s address examines the historical reach and legitimate limits of individual economic responsibility. Against both its liberal identification with unrestricted economic freedom and its apparent displacement by socialist collective responsibility, he argues that personal accountability and organized mutual assistance are complementary. A more thoroughly organized economy need not abolish responsibility; properly constituted institutions make responsibility practicable. The address proceeds from conceptual definition through economic and religious history to contemporary regulation, workers’ organizations, and intellectual education.

Philippovich distinguishes three elements of economic self-responsibility: providing for oneself and one’s dependants; bearing the losses and retaining the gains of economic action; and independently determining economic methods and purposes. Liberalism extended the third element, but did not create the first two. Eighteenth-century arguments for freedom often began with an already binding obligation to maintain oneself: people required freedom because they were responsible, rather than becoming responsible because they were free.

His historical survey challenges the reassuring picture of preliberal guild and feudal institutions as guarantees of subsistence. Harvest failures, commercial changes, technical developments, and monetary fluctuations exposed households to risks that corporate regulation did not remove. Mass poverty and the punishment of able-bodied beggars reveal the accountability underlying supposedly protective orders:

Arm sein war ein Verbrechen, das unter Umständen mit Todesstrafe bedroht war.

English translation: Being poor was a crime that, under certain circumstances, was punishable by death.

The sentence describes a coercive historical practice, not a policy Philippovich endorses. His account moves from medieval charity toward punitive poor laws and compulsory work. Drawing explicitly on Max Weber, he also traces how Protestant vocational ethics elevated disciplined, successful acquisition into a moral duty. Liberalism subsequently generalized an established responsibility by dismantling restrictions that increasingly obstructed its fulfilment.

Yet economic emancipation did not produce independence. Division of labour diminished people’s direct capacity for self-provision while increasing the goods available through cooperation. The removal of dependence on particular masters, officials, or guild authorities intensified exposure to impersonal markets and international competition. Liberalism underestimated the wealth, education, and collective infrastructure needed to withstand these pressures. It also failed to distinguish private advantage from socially beneficial conduct:

Das unbeschränkte Prinzip der wirtschaftlichen Selbstverantwortlichkeit führt geradewegs zur Unverantwortlichkeit der Wirtschaftenden, solange sie nicht unmittelbar Gewalt anwenden oder betrügerisch vorgehen.

English translation: The unrestricted principle of economic self-responsibility leads directly to the irresponsibility of economic actors, so long as they do not directly employ force or act fraudulently.

Responsibility limited to one’s own balance sheet can therefore license harm to others. Philippovich examines land use, monopoly, factory closures, and wasteful luxury to show how legal rules and public judgment impose broader obligations. Economic responsibility acquires its content through socially acknowledged limits and purposes.

Mutual assistance supplies its indispensable institutional counterpart. It includes family care, neighbourly work, insurance, associations, education, transport, markets, and legal protection. Neither altruism nor voluntary membership defines it: common interests, calculation, inherited attachments, and moral expectations can all sustain cooperation. Against Kropotkin’s exclusion of state activity from mutual aid, Philippovich includes public institutions where individuals and voluntary associations cannot provide sufficiently durable and general conditions of development.

This defence remains conditional. State coercion risks uniformity and domination, while organized interests may capture public power for sectional advantage. Against Adolph Wagner’s claim of relatively expanding state activity, Philippovich argues that absolute administrative growth need not mean a larger public share of economic life: private wealth and activity have also expanded, and increasingly complex production generates new regulatory tasks. Boiler inspection legitimately addresses dangers individuals cannot assess; subsidies and protective tariffs may instead shelter inefficient producers from their obligations.

The class analysis likewise joins emancipation to institutional support. Credit, insurance, and associations help entrepreneurs bear uncertainty. Workers gain bargaining power through unions, educational associations, cooperatives, and public protection, although involuntary unemployment remains an especially sharp contradiction between personal responsibility and uncontrollable circumstances. Philippovich acknowledges the inadequacy of existing remedies while favouring provision prepared during employment over support that weakens self-responsibility. His optimism about workers’ progress thus accompanies a demanding insistence on continued personal effort.

The conceptual distinction governing this position becomes explicit near the conclusion:

Zunehmende Ordnung des Wirtschaftslebens und individuelle Verantwortlichkeit vertragen sich.

English translation: Increasing organization of economic life and individual responsibility are compatible.

Individualism excludes competing organizational principles; responsibility can animate collective institutions. Their effectiveness depends on active members, not merely on transferring an organizational form. This makes the address relevant to the boundary between enabling social provision and insulating private interests from consequences.

The final movement connects economic initiative with intellectual freedom. Responsibility cannot be cultivated through penalties alone: it requires independent judgment, critical inquiry, education, and freedom of expression. Philippovich ultimately grounds productive cooperation in the development of capable persons, bringing material and intellectual culture into a single account of social progress.