Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Giovanni Pinnaferrà’s Orientazioni sociologiche della Sardegna (1899)

Schullern’s brief German review presents Pinnaferrà’s 1898 book as a philosophically rigorous defence of economic liberalism whose reception is impeded by its difficult exposition and the author’s relative isolation. It moves from an assessment of accessibility and significance to an account of Pinnaferrà’s objection to socialism, then closes with a compressed survey of his economic and sociological arguments.

The initial criticism concerns the book’s dependence on earlier writings:

Wie Bertolini in seinem Vorworte sagt, ist es schwer, sich in dem Werke Pinnaferrà's zurechtzufinden, wenn man nicht des Gelehrten frühere Schriften, insbesondere sein „Manuale del Vero e del Bene“ kennt; es liegt darin entschieden ein Mangel des Buches.

English translation: As Bertolini says in his preface, it is difficult to find one's way in Pinnaferrà's work if one does not know the scholar's earlier writings, in particular his "Manuale del Vero e del Bene"; therein lies decidedly a defect of the book.

Yet Schullern finds the work worth publicizing for both its unusually forceful liberalism and its logical precision. His account distinguishes intellectual strength from practical reach: Pinnaferrà’s location, language, and compressed style may prevent his arguments from reaching their intended opponents. Schullern explicitly declines to settle whether the philosophical weapons chosen against socialism are methodologically appropriate. His immediate purpose is to make this neglected intervention available for debate.

The conceptual centre of the review is Pinnaferrà’s accusation that socialism, understood broadly, converts an economic problem into a question of ethics and justice, then derives economic conclusions from that transformation. Schullern reports this as Pinnaferrà’s diagnosis of socialism’s fundamental error, without independently demonstrating it. The positive alternative begins with a conception of human good grounded in autonomous coexistence and voluntary competition:

Der Verfasser geht von dem Begriffe des menschlich Guten aus, welches durch die Handlungen der Menschen selbst gesetzt werde, wenn sie sich in der Richtung der autonomen Koexistenz unter Wirtschaftssubjekten bewegen und im freiwilligen Wettlauf um allgemeinen Fortschritt möglichst große Erfolge zu erzielen streben, um so das Gesetz der Abgleichung der Kräfte zu bewahrheiten.

English translation: The author proceeds from the concept of the humanly good, which is posited by the actions of men themselves when they move in the direction of autonomous coexistence among economic subjects and, in a voluntary race for general progress, strive to attain the greatest possible successes, thus verifying the law of the equalization of forces.

This passage gives competition a cooperative horizon: economic subjects pursue achievement within a voluntary race toward general progress. Accordingly, the closing survey emphasizes Pinnaferrà’s recasting of social struggle as a race rather than a battle. It also records his rejection of the possibility of overproduction, his insistence that labour is not a commodity, his questioning of the scientific validity of the opposition between labour and capital, and his treatment of income distribution. The book ends, in Schullern’s account, with an examination of Malthusianism whose basic insight Pinnaferrà regards as profoundly true.

The review’s relevance lies in its effort to bring a geographically and linguistically marginal liberal argument into wider scholarly controversy. Schullern admires its argumentative force while preserving a distinction between drawing attention to an opponent of socialism and endorsing the adequacy of that opponent’s method.