[Rezension zu Heinrich Reschauer: Geschichte des Kampfes der Handwerkerzünfte und der Kaufmannsgremien mit der österreichischen Bureaukratie]

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s Review of Heinrich Reschauer (1883)

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s 1883 review of Heinrich Reschauer’s Geschichte des Kampfes der Handwerkerzünfte und der Kaufmannsgremien mit der österreichischen Bureaukratie evaluates a historical account of Austrian trade legislation and its relevance to contemporary reform. He endorses Reschauer’s concern that reformers knew foreign legislation better than their own country’s legislative past. Despite gaps in the documentation, particularly for earlier periods, he regards the principal developments as clearly established and the treatment of recent decades as informative.

The review presents industrial recovery after the Thirty Years’ War and the Counter-Reformation as the starting point of a gradual erosion of guild monopoly. The authorities sought to revive production without relying on weakened guild institutions:

Da man von den verkommenen Zünften wenig oder nichts für die Hebung der Gewerbe erwartete, suchte man eine Belebung der letzteren ausserhalb des Zunftverbandes anzubahnen.

English translation: Since little or nothing was expected of the decayed guilds for the raising of the trades, an attempt was made to initiate a revival of the latter outside the guild association.

Factory privileges, permission for independent masters to operate, and exemptions from guild obligations expanded economic activity beyond corporate control. Public authorities also increasingly took responsibility for granting mastership. This process weakened the guilds without immediately abolishing their legal organization.

Durch die liberale Handhabung dieses Verleihungsrechtes und durch die zahlreichen Exemtionen vom Zunftzwang traten Ende des vorigen Jahrhunderts Zustände ein, die thatsächlich von einer vollen Gewerbefreiheit nicht weit entfernt waren.

English translation: Through the liberal handling of this right of conferment and through the numerous exemptions from guild compulsion, conditions arose at the end of the last century which in fact were not far removed from full freedom of trade.

The distinction between formal institutions and practical freedom is central to Böhm-Bawerk’s assessment. Administrative discretion and exemptions could produce conditions approaching freedom of trade while guild structures survived. The bureaucracy therefore figures as an agent of liberalization, resisting demands for renewed guild protection even under Francis I, whose sympathies favored the guilds and opposed large industry.

The review follows this conflict through the unsuccessful legislative consolidation of 1835 and the contrasting proposals of 1854 and 1856. The liberal proposal of 1856 provided the basis for the ordinance of December 1859. Böhm-Bawerk accepts Reschauer’s argument that the ordinance’s recognition of freedom of trade represented less of a rupture than commonly supposed: administrative practice had already substantially anticipated it.

This continuity matters for interpreting economic distress. Complaints about the decline of small trades preceded the ordinance and cannot therefore be explained simply as consequences of its enactment. Historical reconstruction challenges an account that identifies a conspicuous legislative change as the origin of difficulties already present under the licensing system.

Böhm-Bawerk’s concluding judgment separates the book’s historical achievement from its discussion of contemporary industrial problems and remedies. He considers the historical findings valuable to theorists and practitioners alike, but finds the policy discussion weakened by exaggerated and one-sided presentation, despite its sound observations. The review thus links appreciation of Reschauer’s research with a methodological caution: the effects of legislation must be assessed against prior administrative practice, and the chronology of economic grievances must constrain explanations of their causes.