Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk on Georg Schanz’s Die Steuern der Schweiz (1891)

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s 1891 review of Georg Schanz’s five-volume history of Swiss taxation makes a methodological argument through an exceptionally favourable assessment of historical scholarship. Its central claim is that Switzerland’s cantonal diversity supplies unusually powerful evidence for studying the effects of tax legislation. The review moves from the limits of social-scientific experimentation to the comparative possibilities of Swiss fiscal history, then explains Schanz’s organization of that evidence and highlights its theoretical and practical lessons.

Böhm-Bawerk begins with the difficulty of isolating causes in social life. Institutions and laws operate amid innumerable concurrent influences; public welfare cannot ethically become disposable experimental material; and legislative interventions cannot be repeated or varied at will. Swiss taxation nevertheless offers an approximation to experimental conditions without having been designed as an experiment. Following the Helvetic Republic, twenty-five neighbouring jurisdictions recovered legislative independence and developed contrasting fiscal systems within a broadly shared historical environment.

Kurz, der Steuerpolitiker findet in der Steuergesetzgebung der Schweiz während der letzten 80 Jahre gerade jenes glückliche Gemisch von constanten und variablen Elementen, wie es sonst nur der Experimentator künstlich herzustellen in der Lage ist, und das somit einen wahren Schatz für die aus der Erfahrung schöpfende Wissenschaft bildet.

English translation: In short, in the tax legislation of Switzerland during the last 80 years the student of tax policy finds precisely that fortunate mixture of constant and variable elements which otherwise only the experimenter is in a position to produce artificially, and which therefore constitutes a true treasure for a science that draws upon experience.

The decisive conceptual move is a double comparison: similar laws can be examined under dissimilar social conditions, and different laws under otherwise similar conditions. Urban and rural, Germanic and Romance, aristocratic and democratic cantons provide distinctions through which the investigator can separate the general effects of legislation from the characteristics of particular communities. Böhm-Bawerk’s praise of Schanz rests on his having made this comparative resource accessible through exhaustive research and intelligent arrangement.

Ich bin gegenüber dem Schanz’schen Werke in der ebenso seltenen als angenehmen Lage eines Kritikers, der nichts zu kritisieren findet.

English translation: In respect of Schanz's work I am in the as rare as it is agreeable position of a critic who finds nothing to criticize.

The review substantiates this verdict by describing the work’s architecture. Volumes II–IV contain twenty-five cantonal historical studies; volume V reproduces the tax laws currently in force; volume I draws together the findings in an analytical synthesis. Böhm-Bawerk devotes substantial space to the contents of the ninety-two-page study of Vaud, tracing its coverage of fiscal foundations, failed reforms, constitutional changes, property assessment, and state and municipal taxes. This inventory demonstrates the depth beneath Schanz’s generalizations. Equally important, the histories recover motives, political moods, parliamentary deliberations, and revealing episodes rather than merely recording legislative events. Their usefulness to scholarship and policy depends on explaining how fiscal institutions developed.

In discussing the synthetic first volume, Böhm-Bawerk singles out the relationship between political change and the distribution of taxation:

Wir sehen, wie sich langsam, aber unaufhaltsam das Steuerwesen der Schweiz demokratisiert, und wie in Verbindung damit die progressive Besteuerung zu immer allgemeinerer Herrschaft gelangt.

English translation: We see how the tax system of Switzerland slowly but irresistibly becomes democratized, and how, in connection with this, progressive taxation attains an ever more general dominance.

He then uses the Swiss evidence to unsettle complacent explanations of fiscal discontent. Heavy taxation exists even without the burdens of militarism; political freedom does not ensure voluntary compliance; and some cantons require unusually extensive controls and penalties. Troubles taxpayers imagine peculiar to their own country prove internationally recurrent. Comparative inquiry thus corrects both national self-pity and idealized views of Swiss public life.

The most pointed administrative finding concerns municipal participation in assessment. Böhm-Bawerk endorses Schanz’s statistical demonstration that greater influence for municipal organs at the initial assessment stage accompanies less satisfactory technical execution. He interprets this as local interests obstructing the general interest, showing that democratization and fiscal administrative effectiveness cannot simply be equated.

The review concludes by recommending Schanz to theorists, statesmen, parliamentarians, and dissatisfied taxpayers alike. Its lasting methodological interest lies in connecting detailed institutional history to causal comparison: scholarly completeness matters because it makes differences in legislation, social conditions, and administrative outcomes available for disciplined explanation.