Joseph A. Schumpeter · 1910
Schumpeter’s review evaluates Levy’s history of monopoly and industrial organization in Britain by distinguishing its documentary usefulness from its analytical originality. He follows the book’s three historical sections while assigning them different scholarly value.
The first section examines monopolies granted by Tudor and Stuart monarchs, chiefly to favourites or their agents, alongside guild-like formations combining characteristics of different epochs. Schumpeter praises the concise treatment of their effects, contemporary assessments, and reactions against them. The second section traces combinations in coal and copper mining during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It receives his strongest endorsement for originality:
Dieser Abschnitt ist von besonderem Interesse und bringt am meisten Neues.
English translation: This section is of particular interest and offers the most that is new.
This localized praise qualifies the review’s broader approval. The third and longest section, concerning the capitalist reorganization of British large-scale industry, supplements an established account rather than opening wholly new ground:
Der dritte und längste Abschnitt — »die Neuorganisation der britischen Großindustrie auf kapitalistischer Grundlage« — umspannt dasselbe Gebiet wie Macrostys Standardwerk, das er in einigen Punkten ergänzt.
English translation: The third and longest section - "the reorganization of British large-scale industry on a capitalist basis" - covers the same ground as Macrosty's standard work, which it supplements on several points.
Schumpeter welcomes the investigation because of the scientific and practical importance of economic transformations and economic-policy movements increasingly apparent since the 1880s, yet finds little fundamentally new for the specialist. Its chief conceptual interest concerns resistance to industrial consolidation:
Die wichtigsten Resultate liegen in der Richtung des Problems jener Hemmungen, denen die modernen Konzentrations- und Organisierungstendenzen in England begegnen.
English translation: The most important results lie in the direction of the problem of those impediments which the modern tendencies toward concentration and organization encounter in England.
The emphasis falls on obstacles to concentration and organization, not simply on their advance. Nevertheless, Schumpeter judges Levy’s interpretation more suggestive than conclusive: it sharpens perception without substantially enlarging it. He locates the book’s principal value in assembling material, while regarding its discussion as secondary and not consistently convincing in detail. His assessment thus preserves the study’s usefulness without equating historical compilation with explanatory achievement.
This work was divided into 1 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 1 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian