Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen: Review of Arthur H. Gibson’s Natural economy (1902)

Schullern’s short German review examines the first published part of Gibson’s projected introduction to political economy. It proceeds from an account of the larger work’s conceptual architecture to a methodological objection, then closes by identifying the subjects actually treated in the available volume. Its central concern is whether Gibson’s rigorous abstraction clarifies economic inquiry or removes its object from the sphere of human economic life.

Der vorliegende Band ist der erste Teil eines geplanten Werkes, dessen Fertigstellung dem Autor aber noch sehr ferne liegend erscheint.

English translation: The present volume is the first part of a planned work, whose completion, however, appears to the author still to lie very far off.

This provisional scope matters: Schullern distinguishes Gibson’s programme from its execution. The programme divides political economy into four domains. Natural economy separates an objective account of human capacities and needs, excluding purposes and institutions, from a subjective account that admits purposive awareness. Cosmopolitan economy introduces private property and exchange while setting aside differences of race and language and conflicts between states. The economies of particular communities disclose the contextual character of economic policy; individual economy requires case-by-case examination. Schullern thus presents Gibson’s classification as a graduated admission of purposes, institutions, and social particularity.

Es ist aus dem Gesagten klar zu ersehen, daß Gibson bei Abgrenzung seiner Beobachtungsgegenstände mit größter Schärfe zu Werke geht und daß er in den ersten zwei Teilen, vor allem aber im ersten, eine überaus strenge Abstraktion durchführt, über deren Berechtigung wohl gewisse Zweifel auftauchen können.

English translation: It is clearly to be seen from what has been said that Gibson proceeds with the greatest rigour in delimiting his objects of observation, and that in the first two parts, but above all in the first, he carries through an exceedingly strict abstraction, about whose justification certain doubts may well arise.

The recognition of conceptual precision leads directly to doubt about its legitimacy. Schullern’s sharpest objection concerns “objective natural economy”: human production and consumption governed solely by physical laws scarcely seem to exist in actual human life. Even if such an object can be constructed abstractly, he argues, its investigation would belong to natural science rather than economics. The review’s methodological significance lies in this distinction between a coherent abstraction and an appropriate object of disciplinary inquiry.

The closing account makes that objection concrete. The published volume devotes six chapters to objective natural economy and one to subjective natural economy. The former investigates natural materials, force, and intelligence as productive elements, frequently comparing their operation and limits with the economy of bees. The latter asks how economic striving directs humanity’s limited productive capacity toward particular products. Schullern’s contrast places the return of human purpose at the boundary between a physical account of productive processes and an inquiry into economic allocation.