Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Alberto Zorli (1903)

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s short German review introduces Alberto Zorli’s Primi principii di economia sociale descrittiva e teoretica (1902) through its proposed reorganization of economics around the social-economic enterprise. Schullern presents Zorli’s claim to originality without undertaking a sustained evaluation: the enterprise, or azienda economica, comprises persons and goods together, rather than merely a stock of goods. He qualifies the German term Unternehmung as nontechnical and suggests Betrieb as a possible alternative. The conceptual stakes are condensed in one sentence:

Die Unternehmung ist für Zorli die wahre Sozialzelle.

English translation: For Zorli the enterprise is the true social cell.

This “social cell” becomes the organizing unit of economic knowledge. Zorli defines the discipline through the systematic understanding of enterprises’ assets, liabilities, and balances, considering people, goods, and their relations. In this reconstruction, “ökonomische Konvenienz” displaces value as the science’s central category. Schullern reports that shift but does not explain the replacement concept in detail.

The review follows the book’s division between descriptive classification and theoretical exposition:

Die Ausführungen teilen sich in zwei Bücher, von denen das erstere im wesentlichen deskriptiven, das letztere theoretischen Charakter hat.

English translation: The exposition falls into two books, of which the former has an essentially descriptive, the latter a theoretical character.

The first book groups forms of enterprise according to several criteria and culminates in a synoptic table that Schullern praises as original but considers too complex to reproduce or discuss. His attention then turns to the second book’s account of economics as the foundation of public finance, Zorli’s principal research field.

Here the enterprise concept extends to the state: state economic activity is treated as a collective enterprise distinguished from others by its coercive character. Public finance draws its general economic principles from economics, while financial and administrative law, together with accounting rules, supply the norms and categories appropriate to the state. The review’s chief significance lies in identifying this connection between Zorli’s general conceptual reform and his treatment of public finance. Schullern closes by invoking the distinctive terminology and originality of the exposition to explain his brevity; his aim is to stimulate interest in the book, rather than establish the validity of its new foundations.