Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1893
Schullern’s review selectively examines the economic and social arguments of Marino’s 1892 book. Its organizing concern is the value of psychology for explaining economic life, especially the emergence and significance of cooperative association. Schullern welcomes this approach while distinguishing its promise from the completeness of Marino’s demonstration.
The review begins with Marino’s account of an ascending order of wants: people first enjoy material goods, then learn to value intellectual goods more highly. Schullern connects this proposition to Menger’s theory of needs and to social-policy questions such as a fixed working day. He then traces Marino’s movement from individual psychology to social organization. A satisfactory society must provide everyone with what is necessary to live as a human being; Marino attributes the failure to achieve this condition to the dominance of the principle of economizing over human conduct.
Association supplies the proposed bridge between psychological development and social reform. Historically developing associations prepare an ideal association modeled increasingly on friendship, arising freely and naturally, and capable of averting conflict between individuals and the state. Schullern follows this argument through workers’ education, trade unions, and productive and economic cooperatives. Education can counter the dangers of association, while cooperatives promise to transform both unions and society. Marino’s ideal culminates in a striking formulation:
Die Idealform der Gesellschaft ist jene Association, in der niemand befiehlt und niemand gehorcht, in der aber alle befehlen und alle gehorchen (S. 327).
English translation: The ideal form of society is that association in which no one commands and no one obeys, but in which all command and all obey (p. 327).
This paradox condenses the attempt to reconcile individuality and collective order. Schullern treats these propositions as scattered milestones toward explaining modern cooperation through human mental life, and as indications of Marino’s position in relation to individualism and socialism.
The review’s final movement assesses the distance between conceptual unity and evidential completion. Schullern credits Marino with proving some claims, but objects that other readily available demonstrations remain unattempted and that fruitful ideas, gathered from existing literature or developed independently, are left unused.
Wohl fügt sich der ganze Gedankengang des Autors zu einem einheitlichen Baue zusammen, es ist aber hier und dort die letzte Hand nicht mehr angelegt worden.
English translation: The author's whole train of thought does indeed join together into a unified structure, but here and there the finishing hand has no longer been laid to it.
The architectural metaphor defines Schullern’s qualified approval: Marino offers a coherent structure without fully completing its arguments. The review’s significance lies in this conjunction of methodological sympathy and critical restraint. Psychological inquiry provides a promising foundation for economics, and Marino’s philosophy offers useful directions for economists, but the explanation of cooperation still requires more sustained development.
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