Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Eteocle Lorini’s Il profitto (1902)

Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen’s review traces Lorini’s attempt to place entrepreneurial profit at the centre of the social question. Reviewing the 1901 book, Schullern presents it as a preliminary sketch by an economist previously known for monetary studies. His chapter-by-chapter account emphasizes Lorini’s theoretical independence while reserving judgment on arguments requiring fuller criticism.

The opening chapter reconsiders economic inquiry’s supposed foundational premises: economic efficiency, diminishing returns, and Malthusian population theory. Lorini treats efficiency as a norm of conduct bounded by morality and law, rather than as a premise of research. His broader methodological claim makes economics dependent on premises supplied by moral, legal, and political inquiry, which it then employs inductively. Schullern leaves the compatibility of this position with collectivist thinking unresolved, but welcomes Lorini’s optimistic treatment of diminishing returns in human labour over long periods and from the standpoint of society as a whole.

The next conceptual move separates the entrepreneur from capital and the capitalist. Schullern recounts a tension in which entrepreneurs seek release from capitalists’ constraints, even though capitalist interests helped create modern large-scale entrepreneurial industry. The joint-stock company emerges from both parties’ struggle against risk. This differentiation prepares Lorini’s definition of profit as specifically entrepreneurial income and his rejection of its classification as rent. Schullern identifies the resulting theoretical stakes:

Diese skizzenhaften Ausführungen sind für alle diejenigen von besonderem Interesse, welche eine einheitliche Erklärung der Einkommensarten postulieren.

English translation: These sketch-like expositions are of particular interest to all those who postulate a unified explanation of the kinds of income.

The review thus locates the book’s relevance in debates over whether distinct income categories can receive a unified explanation. Its final discussion turns to Lorini’s contrasting treatments of profit in capitalist and entrepreneurial industry. Schullern explicitly withholds a compressed account of these sections, judging that they demand detailed criticism, but reports their distributive conclusion: if each productive factor, including entrepreneurial activity, receives income according to its productive contribution, neither harmony nor antagonism follows inherently from the relation among income shares. Antagonism instead arises because actual distribution fails to follow that principle.

The review closes with Lorini’s pointed reassignment of responsibility:

Nicht mehr das Kapital, sondern der Unternehmer sei heute der Feind der gerechten Verteilung.

English translation: No longer capital, he holds, but the entrepreneur is today the enemy of just distribution.

This ending gives the review its critical focus without establishing Schullern’s endorsement. Lorini’s separation of entrepreneurship from capital does more than distinguish sources of income: it relocates the obstacle to just distribution in the entrepreneur’s contemporary position. Schullern presents that claim as the provocative outcome of a suggestive, still sketch-like argument.