Carl Menger, “Nationalökonomie” (1873)

Carl Menger’s short review, signed “M.,” assesses Emanuel Herrmann’s Principien der Wirthschaft. Its central judgment is that Herrmann opens a valuable field for economic inquiry—the economical organization of industrial production—but develops it with excessive technical detail and insufficient methodological rigor. Menger moves from Herrmann’s earlier writings and intellectual originality to an account of his project, then situates that project within political economy before weighing its shortcomings.

Herrmann’s distinctiveness lies both in his answers and in the questions he asks. His book follows useful materials from the three kingdoms of nature through successive stages of production to readiness for consumption, seeking the economic principles that make this process most effective. Menger welcomes this emphasis because political economy, from the Physiocrats onward, has concentrated chiefly on exchange and commercial intercourse, even attracting the designation “Katallaktik.” A developed economic theory of production would complement that established inquiry and give a comparatively neglected subject its proper standing. Menger nevertheless notes that others, particularly Hasner, had already attempted this extension.

Approval of the project does not imply approval of Herrmann’s intellectual isolation. Menger makes originality itself a qualified virtue:

Herrmann ist überall durchaus originell. Er geht hierin vielleicht sogar etwas zu weit.

English translation: Herrmann is thoroughly original throughout. In this he perhaps even goes somewhat too far.

Herrmann neither engages other writers’ opinions nor builds from prevailing conceptions. What initially appears as independence consequently acquires, in Menger’s account, the characteristic stamp of a gifted autodidact. Scientific advance requires more than unfamiliar problems and ingenious solutions: it also requires engagement with existing knowledge.

The decisive criticism concerns the boundary between describing production and explaining it economically:

Technische Processe werden häufig mit großer Ausführlichkeit dargelegt, während die rein ökonomische Seite der Aufgabe in den Hintergrund tritt oder durch die Aufstellung einiger Analogien der Erscheinungen der Volkswirthschaft mit jenen der Natur abgethan wird.

English translation: Technical processes are frequently set forth at great length, while the purely economic side of the task recedes into the background or is disposed of by the setting up of a few analogies between the phenomena of the national economy and those of nature.

Technical exposition and analogies with nature cannot substitute for analysis of economic relations. Menger further finds rigorous method wanting in both research and presentation. The review’s relevance lies in this distinction: enlarging political economy’s subject matter is worthwhile only if the new material receives specifically economic and methodically disciplined treatment. His conclusion remains deliberately encouraging:

Aber auch mit diesen Mängeln wird man die Herrmann'sche Schrift sicherlich nicht ohne bedeutenden Nutzen lesen und wird dieselbe, wie wir hoffen, auch nicht ohne fördernden Einfluß auf die Wissenschaft der Nationalökonomie bleiben.

English translation: But even with these defects one will certainly not read Herrmann's work without considerable profit, and it will, as we hope, not remain without a beneficial influence upon the science of political economy either.

Menger thus presents Herrmann’s book as a useful, potentially productive intervention whose scientific promise exceeds the rigor of its execution.