Carl Menger, “Nationalökonomische Literatur. Primi Elementi di Economia Politica” (1884)

Carl Menger’s review of the sixth edition of Luigi Cossa’s Primi Elementi di Economia Politica uses an Italian economics textbook to challenge the direction of German economic scholarship. Published in 1884 and dated Vienna, October 1883, the review moves from a diagnosis of German economics to an account of Cossa’s theoretical orientation, pedagogical strengths, and wider scholarly achievement. Its central claim is that economics must retain an autonomous inquiry into the nature and laws of economic phenomena, rather than subordinate theory to historical description and social reform.

Menger begins by placing Cossa alongside Boccardo among Italy’s most widely circulated economic authors. This reception makes Cossa’s textbook a useful point of comparison with Germany, where dissatisfaction with classical economics has encouraged repeated attempts to reconstruct the discipline. Menger shares the conviction that inherited theory needs revision, but argues that German scholarship has abandoned its foundations without securing replacements:

Die neuere deutsche Nationalökonomie hat die Grundlagen der Adam Smith'schen Lehre verlassen, aber neue gesicherte Fundamente einer Theorie der volkswirthschaftlichen Erscheinungen noch nicht gefunden, ja im Streben nach solchen nahezu den Begriff der Wissenschaft verloren.

English translation: The more recent German political economy has abandoned the foundations of Adam Smith's doctrine, but has not yet found new secure foundations for a theory of economic phenomena; indeed, in striving after such foundations it has almost lost the very concept of science.

The accusation concerns the displacement of theoretical explanation, not simply disagreement with particular doctrines. Historical research and the treatment of social problems have become so dominant, Menger argues, that even scholars who retain the idea of theory make it serve historiography and reform.

Cossa supplies the contrasting model. His textbook investigates economic concepts, methods, and the laws governing prices, wages, and interest. Menger’s deliberately provocative praise makes the presence of theory itself appear unfamiliar to a German reader:

Was den deutschen Leser von Cossa's Grundsätzen der politischen Oekonomie vor Allem fremdartig berührt, ist der Umstand, dass er hier wirklich eine politische Oekonomie, im Sinne einer theoretischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, eine Wissenschaft von dem Wesen und den Gesetzen der Volkswirthschaft zu Gesichte bekommt.

English translation: What strikes the German reader of Cossa's Principles of Political Economy as above all strange is the circumstance that here he really gets to see a political economy in the sense of a theoretical science of the national economy, a science of the essence and the laws of the national economy.

Menger sharpens this contrast through examples of what Cossa excludes: narrowly local economic histories, attempted solutions to the social question, and analogies between economic life and biological organisms. These exclusions define the task of a theoretical textbook. What appears distinctive in Germany, he maintains, remains ordinary disciplinary practice in Italy and other countries.

The review’s next conceptual move separates theoretical improvement from a wholesale rupture with earlier economics. Cossa incorporates recent research and revises individual doctrines while maintaining continuity with Smith and the English-French tradition. For Menger, this combination demonstrates that progress need not erase the identity of the science. His polemical comparison portrays the German historical school’s estrangement from classical economics as an accompanying estrangement from international scholarship.

Menger then turns from disciplinary orientation to Cossa’s individual accomplishment:

Es ist kaum möglich, in einem so engen Rahmen ein umfassendes Material mit grösserer Vollständigkeit und Präcision zu behandeln, als dies der gelehrte Italiener thut.

English translation: It is scarcely possible to treat so comprehensive a material within so narrow a frame with greater completeness and precision than the learned Italian does.

Comparisons with Mangoldt, Ellis, and Senior specify this praise: Cossa combines concise expression with thorough coverage, avoiding excessive dryness while meeting the practical demands of a university lecture guide. Menger distinguishes this introductory achievement from Cossa’s detailed original research, which requires attention to his other publications.

The closing survey accordingly extends to the Saggi di Economia Politica, the Guida allo studio dell’ Economia Politica, and Cossa’s outline of public finance. Menger praises both historical investigations—on medieval theories, seventeenth-century free trade, and early Italian economics chairs—and theoretical work on capital, production limits, and industrial enterprise. This positive assessment of historical scholarship qualifies the earlier polemic: history has value within economic inquiry, but should not absorb its theoretical purpose. The review’s lasting significance lies in this defense of disciplinary differentiation, joined to an account of intellectual progress through critical continuity rather than either unmodified classical doctrine or the abandonment of theory.