Richard Kerschagl on Meade’s Economic Order (1956)

Richard Kerschagl’s review of James Edward Meade’s Probleme nationaler und internationaler Wirtschaftsordnung follows the book’s two-part structure: monetary and price mechanisms, then economic union among sovereign states. His assessment combines criticism of liberal-socialist policy thinking with qualified appreciation of Meade’s treatment of international integration.

Kerschagl finds little novelty in the first part but values it as an illustration, for continental scholars, of the intellectual pattern Meade calls liberal-socialist. His central objection is that liberal theoretical premises yield socialist practical conclusions:

Genau so wie bei den Arbeiten etwa von Beveridge ist der erste Teil der vorliegenden Arbeit von Meade ein besonders schönes Beispiel dafür, wie diese Art des Denkens theoretisch liberal, aber praktisch sozialistisch endet.

English translation: Just as with the works of Beveridge, for instance, the first part of the present work by Meade is a particularly fine example of how this kind of thinking ends theoretically liberal but practically socialist.

The comparison with Beveridge supplies Kerschagl’s historical warrant: he invokes British rationing, nationalization of the Bank of England, and compulsory saving as evidence of this trajectory. These examples establish the review’s evaluative framework rather than reconstructing Meade’s monetary arguments in detail.

The second part receives greater praise as illuminating, but Kerschagl faults Meade’s insufficient knowledge of continental European scholarship from the preceding twenty years. For him, familiarity with that literature is a condition of originality and economical scholarly work: without it, researchers risk retracing paths already explored. Within this criticism, he singles out a substantive achievement:

Vielleicht das Interessanteste an diesem zweiten Teil ist die Untersuchung darüber, wie weit Wirtschaftsunionen unter den heutigen Verhältnissen in der Lage sein können, die Idee des "Wohlfahrtsstaates" mit der des "Verteidigungsstaates" in Einklang zu bringen.

English translation: Perhaps the most interesting thing about this second part is the investigation of how far economic unions under today's conditions can be in a position to reconcile the idea of the "welfare state" with that of the "defence state".

This reconciliation of welfare and defense gives economic union its particular political relevance. Kerschagl also identifies Meade’s attempt to make planning compatible with the market mechanism without communist central direction, even under comprehensive combinations based on alignment or complementarity. Yet he finds the analysis comparatively lacking in the model-based reasoning he associates with Anglo-American economics.

The review closes by calling for a comprehensive bibliography that would situate Meade alongside other economists’ work on economic unions. Despite its ideological and scholarly reservations, Kerschagl welcomes the German translation. His judgment thus joins a warning about liberal-socialist policy outcomes to a demand for better cross-national scholarly engagement in the study of economic integration.