Schumpeter’s review evaluates economics textbooks, histories of thought, and teaching aids by asking how instruction can cultivate economic reasoning rather than merely transmit facts and opinions. The extended assessments of Lexis and Taussig establish his theoretical standards; the shorter discussions connect conceptual organization with historical exposition and guided reading.
Lexis’s Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre earns praise for treating the economic circuit as a unified problem instead of following a conventional textbook scheme. Its treatment of value, however, moves uncertainly between subjective valuation, acquisition costs, and labor. Schumpeter questions the explanatory role of labor costs when they do not account for market values. His objection becomes especially pointed in the discussion of supply:
Wer jemals beobachtet hat, wie unendlich aufklärend die Analyse des Angebotes im Sinne der subjektiven Werttheorie wirkt, wird jede Hindeutung auf eine solche im Abschnitt darüber schmerzlich vermissen.
English translation: Whoever has ever observed how infinitely illuminating the analysis of supply in the sense of the subjective theory of value proves to be will painfully miss any indication of such an analysis in the section devoted to it.
The complaint concerns a missed analytical opportunity, not simply allegiance to a theoretical school. Subjective value theory should explain how supply arises, while monopoly and competitive-price analysis should illuminate concrete problems and support empirical investigation. Lexis’s failure to distinguish entrepreneurial profit from interest creates further difficulties. Appeals to economic power cannot replace an account of productive goods, nor can ordinary price markups explain a permanent surplus outside monopoly. Nevertheless, Schumpeter values the monetary and banking chapters and the heuristic possibilities of Lexis’s aggregate economic circuit.
Schullern’s Grundzüge offers a balanced instructional framework, combining conceptual foundations, economic history, theory, and policy. Schumpeter welcomes its Austrian theoretical orientation and measured political judgments, while seeking more Austrian economic history and closer connections between policy and theory. Schwiedland supplies a contrasting case: abundant facts and sociological opinions do not compensate for insufficient systematic reasoning. Accessibility becomes educationally costly when it excludes the conceptual work that makes knowledge coherent.
Taussig’s Principles of Economics receives the review’s strongest endorsement. Schumpeter regards it as an independent theoretical achievement, closer to subjective value theory than some older formulations suggest. Its scope extends from production and exchange to money, international trade, distribution, labor, industrial organization, and taxation. Applications to banking, railways, and trusts show how general principles acquire explanatory force in concrete settings.
Im Rahmen einer Besprechung können freilich die vielen Vorzüge dieser Darstellung nicht zu ihrem Rechte kommen, die sie wissenschaftlich wie didaktisch auf eine sehr hohe Stufe stellen.
English translation: Within the compass of a review, to be sure, the many merits of this exposition, which place it on a very high level both scientifically and didactically, cannot receive their due.
This praise joins scientific achievement to pedagogical effectiveness. Yet Schumpeter identifies weaknesses: insufficient use of mathematical price theory, problems in taxation, and a classical treatment of rent that denies land’s productive contribution. In contesting the latter position, he invokes a more discriminating reading of the classical tradition:
Aber abgesehen davon und von dem nivellierenden Einfluß des Kapitalisierungsprozesses hat doch schon Ricardo gelehrt, in welchem Sinn der abgelehnte Lehrsatz zu verstehen ist.
English translation: But apart from that and from the levelling influence of the process of capitalization, Ricardo had already taught in what sense the rejected proposition is to be understood.
The appeal to Ricardo makes historical interpretation part of theoretical criticism rather than an alternative to it. Schumpeter particularly values Taussig’s connected accounts of interest and wages, informed by Böhm-Bawerk and discounted marginal productivity, and recommends a German translation.
The histories by Haney and Spann extend the concern with intellectual coherence. Haney’s exposition is clear and judicious, but its division into founders, followers, opponents, and reconstructions fragments classical economics. Categories such as optimism and pessimism offer little analytical precision. Spann’s compact, independent survey is better organized for the history of policy ideas than for the development of pure theory. Schumpeter therefore urges clearer differentiation between theoretical development and other intellectual currents.
The concluding assessments consider learning through original texts. O. and A. Neurath’s reader provides material for introductory discussion, though historical importance alone does not ensure pedagogical usefulness, and isolated excerpts may mislead beginners. Diehl and Mombert’s longer selections, grouped around money, wages, and rent, offer a complementary, problem-centered approach. Despite reservations about selection and the limited representation of modern theorists, Schumpeter welcomes these teaching aids. Throughout the review, effective instruction depends on conceptual precision, substantive application, and guided engagement with arguments.
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