Carl Menger’s newspaper article interprets the recent Vienna meeting of the Verein für Sozialpolitik as a potentially decisive turn toward economic theory. Moving from an account of the meeting to its disciplinary background and prospective consequences, he argues that renewed theoretical inquiry could correct the one-sidedness of German economics, reshape university teaching, and moderate economic and social-policy disputes.
The opening establishes the institutional reversal. For thirty-six years, Menger reports, the association had excluded theoretical economics from its annual discussions; influential members had treated it contemptuously and opposed the Austrian school’s efforts to reconstruct its foundations. Now, with Schmoller presiding, two scholars trained in that school presented papers on national economic productivity and changes in the value of money. Menger reads this striking scene as the visible sign of a deeper change, rather than an isolated concession.
His explanation contrasts the accumulation of descriptive material with the need for intellectual organization. Decades of historical detail and social-policy research had produced an increasingly unmanageable mass of material whose intellectual yield was sometimes limited. The demand for theory consequently arose within the very scholarly circles that had resisted it. Austrian economists, in his account, had maintained theoretical inquiry while acknowledging the value of historical-statistical and social-policy work. His defense of theory thus challenges descriptive exclusiveness without rejecting empirical research.
The meeting’s disagreements confirm this reading. Objections concerned the complexity of the subjects and the inadequate time allowed for debate, not their legitimacy:
Gegen die Behandlung wirtschaftstheoretischer Fragen hat sich auch nicht eine Stimme erhoben.
English translation: Against the treatment of questions of economic theory not a single voice has been raised.
Menger treats even the movement of discussion toward methodology as evidence of serious engagement. Though some objections may have overshot their target, he accepts their substance if they were sincerely intended. The appropriate next step is therefore neither celebration of an Austrian victory nor renewed factional conflict, but impartial examination of the methods of economic knowledge:
Die methodologische Frage in sachkundiger Weise und ohne jede Parteilichkeit zu behandeln, ist — bei der heutigen Sachlage — die wichtigste Aufgabe der wissenschaftlichen Nationalökonomie Deutschlands.
English translation: To treat the methodological question in an expert manner and without any partisanship is — as matters stand today — the most important task of the scientific economics of Germany.
The institutional significance extends beyond the meeting. Because the association encompassed nearly all German university teachers of political economy, its recognition of theory could restore the subject’s academic standing, reduce curricular one-sidedness, and improve the prospects of younger economists with theoretical inclinations. Menger does not claim that lasting intellectual achievements are assured; he argues that the change already creates favorable conditions for them.
The final movement considers the relation between science and practical policy. Some participants had rejected policy prescriptions and the introduction of ethical postulates into economics, insisting that science should address what exists rather than what ought to exist. Menger reports this position without resolving the complex issue within the article. His narrower claim is that theoretical research can clarify and correct policy debate when it is not subordinated in advance to practical objectives:
Unbefangene theoretische Untersuchungen, die sich nicht etwa von vornherein in den Dienst bestimmter praktischer Bestrebungen stellen, haben stets noch eine ausgleichende und versöhnende Wirkung auf bestehende Gegensätze geübt.
English translation: Impartial theoretical investigations, which do not from the outset place themselves in the service of particular practical endeavors, have always exercised a balancing and reconciling effect upon existing antagonisms.
Theory consequently appears as both an intellectual corrective and a possible source of reconciliation. The closing cautiously enlarges the meaning of the meeting’s “decision day”: a modest procedural innovation might inaugurate a broader transformation of the association. The article’s central conceptual move is to connect theoretical autonomy with institutional renewal and more balanced practical judgment, while leaving the ultimate durability of that transformation open.
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