Joseph A. Schumpeter, “M. E. Waxweiler. Esquisse d’une Sociologie” (1907)

Schumpeter’s review of Waxweiler’s 1906 book praises a research programme grounded in individual conduct and empirical description while questioning its biological starting point. He presents the book as a fertile, deliberately unsystematic source of suggestions, principally for students of the Institut Solvay. The review moves from disciplinary foundations through methods and concrete investigations to the prospects for an exact sociology.

Schumpeter accepts that human beings must be understood through their conditions of life, but disputes the implication that sociology should begin with biological research. Sociology’s independence rests on the inadequacy of biology alone to explain social phenomena. Like chemistry, which can investigate its own phenomena despite the possibility of an underlying mechanical explanation, sociology requires a provisional framework built from its distinctive evidence.

Therefore we think it is misleading, especially for the beginner, to say that it is biological research which ought to be done at first.

This objection qualifies rather than overturns his endorsement: Waxweiler’s actual investigations largely leave biology behind, treating social experience directly and drawing chiefly on psychology. Schumpeter approves his definition of sociology through action and reaction between individuals. He makes the methodological implication explicit:

First of all, such investigations cannot but start from the individual.

For Schumpeter, this starting point rejects the treatment of a social group as an independently acting person and the demand for explanatory principles beyond those supplied by analysis of the individual psyche. The review thereby links sociology’s disciplinary autonomy to an individual-centred account of social relations.

Schumpeter then distinguishes methodological advice, studies of concrete conduct, and analysis of more complex cooperation. He highlights Waxweiler’s attention to everyday experience, his reservations about historical material distorted by “egomorphism,” and his discussion of sociological or psychological experiment. Aggression, defence, friendliness, hostility, and acquisition provide promising objects of investigation because they disclose relations between people through specific forms of conduct. The lexique sociologique extends this descriptive programme: ordinary words such as friendship, household, leadership, gratitude, and ambition supply initial access to familiar social phenomena. Cooperation subsequently opens onto interdependence, leadership, organisation, and association, although Waxweiler’s treatment remains suggestive.

The first thing to be done in sociology is, after all, description of this kind.

This judgment explains why Schumpeter regards the book’s incompleteness as compatible with genuine scientific progress. Sociology is not yet ready for great general laws; precise descriptions must precede systematic explanation. Economics supplies his benchmark for what further development would require:

What is wanted for an exact treatment is a fundamental phenomenon, such as, e.g., value is in economics.

Waxweiler’s proposed “social energy of the individual” offers a possible starting point, but Schumpeter commends his restraint in leaving it a hint. The review’s significance lies in this conjunction of ambition and caution: sociology should pursue exact explanation without premature reduction to biology, personification of groups, or unsupported generalisation. Waxweiler advances that project by making concrete interpersonal conduct the basis for further research.