Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Ugo Rabbeno’s Protezionismo Americano (1894)

Schullern’s review assesses Rabbeno’s historical study of American commercial policy while developing its own account of national interests and the conditions under which protection is justified. Rabbeno seeks to derive laws of commercial policy inductively from historical evidence that resists the abstract theory of the Smithian school. Schullern outlines the book’s three studies: British policy toward the North American colonies, the elements of United States commercial policy, and American protectionist theories. He praises the first two for their collection and interpretation of evidence; his substantive interventions concern the relationship between class and national interests, the historical interpretation of Friedrich List, and Rabbeno’s treatment of Simon N. Patten.

The central disagreement emerges from Rabbeno’s conclusion that free trade becomes fully appropriate only under solidarity among all classes and interests. Without that solidarity, free trade and protection alternate as instruments of the dominant class. Schullern shifts the argument from domestic class relations to relations between nations: even a society without internal antagonisms may need protection because its economic condition differs from those of other states. Protection can therefore serve the whole community rather than merely a ruling group. Its legitimacy nevertheless depends on whether the collective benefit outweighs the sacrifice imposed on a particular class.

Natürlich muss das Urtheil der Gesamtheit ein objectives und darf es nicht eine Fiction sein, durch die sich die eigennützige Politik einer herrschenden Classe beschönigt.

English translation: Naturally the judgment of the community must be an objective one and must not be a fiction by which the self-interested policy of a ruling class glosses itself over.

This qualification makes national welfare a demanding criterion, not an automatic justification for tariffs. Schullern accepts Rabbeno’s suspicion of class domination but rejects the implication that protection must always express it. His alternative is historically conditional commercial policy, judged through both international economic differences and the distribution of costs within the nation.

The third study treats Hamilton, List, Carey, and Patten; Schullern concentrates on List and Patten. He grants that List’s American experience helped shape his doctrine but resists making it the decisive explanation of the National System. German economic circumstances and political aspirations remain essential to its interpretation.

Jedes Werk will nun aber vom Standpunkte seiner Entstehungszeit und des Entstehungsortes beurtheilt werden, erst in zweiter Reihe steht eine Untersuchung über seinen Wert für die Zukunft.

English translation: Every work, however, demands to be judged from the standpoint of the time and the place of its origin; only in the second place stands an inquiry into its value for the future.

Historical contextualization here becomes a corrective to judgments of theoretical exaggeration or one-sidedness. List’s claims must be understood as interventions in a particular national situation, not solely assessed as general propositions. Schullern crystallizes that connection between economic thought and political purpose:

List war nicht nur ein grosser Volkswirtschaftslehrer, er war auch ein grosser Patriot.

English translation: List was not only a great teacher of political economy, he was also a great patriot.

Although he questions Rabbeno’s interpretation, Schullern commends the care and sympathy with which List receives a prominent place in the book. His objection concerns the adequacy of the historical frame, not the seriousness of Rabbeno’s scholarship.

The discussion of Patten introduces a methodological dispute. Schullern attributes some of Rabbeno’s one-sidedness to Patten’s difficult expression, but also to hostility toward his research method and the Austrian school. Such prejudice, he argues, can lead a critic to discover errors where new insights may be present. He declines to offer either a full defense or a critique of Patten, instead pointing to Menger’s classification of the economic sciences as a possible clarification.

The final judgment remains strongly favorable:

Das Werk Rabbenos ist trotz der Bedenken, die wir geglaubt haben, anregen zu müssen, von grösstem Werte, insbesondere sind es die historischen Partien, denen wir nicht genug Lob spenden können und die ein gutes Stück Wirtschaftsgeschichte in sorgfältigster Weise und auf Grund eingehendster, zweifellos durch lange Zeit fortgesetzter Studien uns vor Augen führen.

English translation: Rabbeno's work is, despite the reservations which we have believed ourselves obliged to raise, of the greatest value; it is in particular the historical portions upon which we cannot bestow praise enough, and which set before our eyes a good piece of economic history in the most careful manner and on the basis of the most thorough studies, doubtless continued over a long time.

Even the chapter on Patten, judged the weakest, deserves attention for its potential to clarify debate. The review’s significance lies in this combination of admiration for historical research and resistance to reductive explanation: commercial policy cannot be reduced to class power, List’s theory cannot be detached from German national circumstances, and methodological disagreement should not foreclose recognition of theoretical innovation.