Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk · 1889
Böhm-Bawerk’s review essay examines recent British and American economics through the controversy over historical and abstract methods. Its central distinction is between historical research as an enrichment of economics and methodological exclusivity as an obstacle to explanation. The German historical school renewed the discipline’s empirical foundations, but, in his assessment, its opposition to abstraction eventually frustrated the theoretical development it initially encouraged.
Und so kam es, kurz gesagt, dahin, daß man die Theorie, mit deren Befruchtung man begonnen hatte, im einseitigen Uebereifer schliesslich erstickte.
English translation: And so it came about, in short, that the theory whose fertilisation had been begun was in the end smothered by one-sided over-zeal.
The charge is directed at the suppression of theory, not at historical scholarship itself. Böhm-Bawerk organizes his international comparison around the possibility that historical inquiry and theoretical reconstruction can advance together.
Wesentlich anders scheint sich der Verlauf der analogen Bewegung in England und Amerika zu gestalten.
English translation: The course of the analogous movement in England and America appears to be shaping itself essentially otherwise.
His discussion of Ingram’s History of Political Economy establishes this combination of methodological disagreement and substantive appreciation. He regards the book as an accomplished intellectual history whose organizing purpose nevertheless favors the historical school.
Das Werk ist eine Tendenzschrift, aber eine gehaltvolle und tüchtige Tendenzschrift, die auch der prinzipielle Gegner nicht ohne vielfachen Genuß und Anregung aus der Hand legen wird.
English translation: The work is a tendentious tract, but a substantial and competent tendentious tract, which even the opponent on principle will not lay down without manifold enjoyment and stimulation.
Böhm-Bawerk praises Ingram’s presentation and treatment of Adam Smith but questions classifications that substitute agreement in practical policy for agreement in economic theory. Grouping Smith and the Physiocrats through their commitment to natural liberty obscures differences in their explanations. Similarly, Jevons belongs in the history of abstract theory as a reconstructive force, not primarily as an agent of its dissolution. Yet Ingram’s qualified acceptance of abstraction and deduction also exemplifies the moderation Böhm-Bawerk finds wanting in Germany.
Ashley’s medieval English economic history demonstrates the independent value of substantive historical scholarship: its achievements do not require an exclusive methodological profession of faith. Bastable offers a more explicit account of cooperation. Economics belongs within social science, but its relatively advanced development makes premature absorption into an insufficiently developed sociology undesirable. Induction and deduction should support each other, with their usefulness assessed through results rather than school allegiance.
Wicksteed’s treatment of marginal utility supplies evidence of continued British innovation in abstract economics. Böhm-Bawerk admires its originality while resisting mathematics as the discipline’s general language. His objection concerns both accessibility and the danger that formal elaboration may displace the experiential foundations of sound deduction. The defense of theory is therefore conditional: abstraction must start from empirically established premises rather than operate as an autonomous system.
The American survey extends this argument by contrasting methodological declarations with analytical practice. The reviewed Science Economic Discussion brings together debates about the state, ethics, jurisprudence, economic laws, and methods. Although historical-school positions predominate, Böhm-Bawerk finds that their proponents continue to undertake effective abstract analysis. Patten’s distinction between the natural and economic orders of consumption exemplifies this discrepancy. His work on prices and capital likewise combines experience with general explanatory claims, and Böhm-Bawerk identifies affinities with his own capital theory. Publications associated with the American Economic Association thus reveal theoretical vitality within the new school itself.
Clark’s capital analysis and the wage studies of Stuart Wood and Clark furnish further evidence. Following the abandonment of the wage-fund doctrine, the wage theorists seek explanatory laws through marginal utility and the isolation of causal relations. Böhm-Bawerk considers these advances significant, though dependent on a fuller understanding of capital. Their procedure abstracts from disturbing influences before restoring them to the explanation; it need not abandon concrete reality.
The review ultimately presents historical knowledge and theoretical reasoning as mutually corrective. Historical inquiry broadens evidence and checks speculative deduction, while theory transforms accumulated material into explanation. Its concluding international warning follows from this methodological judgment: Germany’s pioneering historical scholarship does not guarantee continued intellectual leadership if British and American economists combine that achievement with a more vigorous reconstruction of theory.
This work was divided into 8 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 8 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian