Joseph A. Schumpeter: Review of Heinrich Dietzel’s Die Bedeutung des »Nationalen Systems« für die Vergangenheit und die Gegenwart (1927)

Schumpeter’s short review of Dietzel’s 1925 lecture on Friedrich List distinguishes the force of a critique of List’s trade policy from the adequacy of its assessment of his scientific achievement. Its opening establishes the balance maintained throughout:

Das Argument dieses Vortrags glänzt, trifft und schneidet in so vielen Punkten, daß man bedauert, gleich sagen zu müssen, daß es sich durch Outrieren schadet.

English translation: The argument of this lecture shines, strikes home and cuts in so many points that one regrets having to say at once that it does itself harm by overstatement.

Schumpeter grants that List’s polemical methods invite criticism. A combatant for both practical objectives and personal advancement, List did not treat opponents with the care required of a researcher. Dietzel effectively exposes the weakness of his attacks on the economic “school,” the tendency of his trade-policy propositions to culminate in free trade, and the limited originality of infant-industry protection. Especially damaging is the distance between its educational justification and the interests supporting it: beneficiaries sought lasting rents rather than temporary assistance. Schumpeter’s footnote adds a criticism of his own: List’s insistence on reciprocal free trade overlooks the applicability, insofar as they hold, of the principal free-trade arguments to unilateral liberalization.

Yet these concessions prepare a decisive objection to Dietzel’s overall judgment:

Lists Bedeutung für die Wissenschaft erschöpft sich nicht in praktischen Stellungnahmen und weder in den »Erziehungszöllen«, noch den »Produktivkräften«, noch im »nationalen« Standpunkt und in der Gegnerschaft zum »kosmopolitischen«.

English translation: List's significance for science is not exhausted in practical positions taken, and neither in the "educational tariffs," nor in the "productive forces," nor in the "national" standpoint and the opposition to the "cosmopolitan" one.

List’s enduring contribution, Schumpeter argues, lies in his historical understanding not merely of trade-policy systems but of society’s forms of production and life. This cannot be reduced to familiar slogans or policy prescriptions. Although these commitments remain integral to List’s work—more so, Schumpeter suggests, than “Smithianism” does to Smith’s scientific significance—they do not exhaust it. Nor does the existence of precursors invalidate List’s achievement: scientific importance need not entail absolute novelty. What matters here is the distinctive clarity with which List articulated his historical conception.

The closing paragraph returns to Dietzel’s contention that List, under contemporary conditions, would advocate free trade and an exporting industrial state integrated into the world economy. Schumpeter appreciates this thesis as a corrective to attempts to turn List into an abstract philosophical authority, but finds that it only indirectly acknowledges the historical perspective that deserves priority.

Wohl möglich, daß List heute versuchen würde, uns ein Denken in Kontinenten zu lehren. Aber wissenschaftlich wäre auch das Nebensache.

English translation: It is quite possible that List would today attempt to teach us a thinking in continents. But scientifically that too would be a secondary matter.

The review’s central methodological move is thus to separate conjectures about a thinker’s present-day political allegiance from an appraisal of his scientific contribution. Dietzel’s polemic usefully challenges the appropriation of List by protectionist interests; its limitation is that the dismantling of those claims leaves List’s deeper historical insight insufficiently examined.