Gottfried Haberler: Review of Walter Heinrich’s Grundlagen einer universalistischen Krisenlehre (1928)

Gottfried Haberler’s review assesses Heinrich’s attempt to reconstruct crisis theory on the foundations of Othmar Spann’s universalism. Following the book from its survey of existing theories to its constructive exposition, Haberler argues that universalist terminology supplies neither a new causal explanation nor an effective ordering of established economic knowledge. His polemic distinguishes substantive criticism from philosophical labels and explanatory analysis from the accumulation of possible disturbances.

Haberler initially credits Heinrich’s familiarity with German crisis theories, while finding his knowledge of foreign literature largely secondhand. He separates Heinrich’s conventional detailed criticisms from a sweeping attack that attributes existing theories to Marxist influence and repeatedly calls them atomistic, mechanistic, or individualistic. Heinrich’s classification into disproportionality, monetary, natural, and psychological theories raises a methodological issue:

Man hätte da wohl zwischen Beschreibung und ursächlicher Erklärung des Krisenphänomens durch die verschiedenen Theorien zu unterscheiden.

English translation: Here one would surely have had to distinguish between the description and the causal explanation of the phenomenon of crisis by the various theories.

For Haberler, the decisive distinction concerns what a theory explains, not the philosophical vocabulary attached to it. Heinrich’s rejection of labor-value theory and the iron law of wages does not adequately refute overproduction and underconsumption theories. Conversely, his celebration of Adam Müller’s organic equilibrium leaves the mechanism of crisis unspecified:

Im übrigen reduziert sich genau besehen Müllers »Theorie« auf die unbestreitbare Behauptung, daß in der Volkswirtschaft irgend etwas nicht in Ordnung sein müsse, wenn es zu einer Krise kommt.

English translation: For the rest, on closer inspection Müller's "theory" reduces itself to the incontestable assertion that something in the economy must be out of order when a crisis occurs.

This criticism anticipates Haberler’s treatment of Heinrich’s constructive argument. Having conceded that most existing theories contain something valid, Heinrich proposes to arrange their crisis factors in a hierarchy grounded in Spann’s “kinetic universalism.” His expanded concepts of economic fluctuation and crisis encompass economic restructuring and disturbances of correspondence among economic parts. Haberler objects that this initially makes virtually every economic change a crisis, requiring Heinrich to distinguish severe disturbances as crises in a narrower sense.

The ensuing catalogue covers changes in social purposes and institutions, followed by disturbances in economic means: tariffs, taxation, war, consumption patterns, banking errors, industrial organization, and many other circumstances. Haberler treats the organizing vocabulary as an elaborate translation of familiar textbook material. The hierarchy’s purported explanatory achievement amounts to saying that errors in institutions with wider responsibilities generally have wider consequences than errors confined to a single enterprise or subordinate activity. His sarcasm targets the presentation of this commonplace as a theoretical breakthrough, rather than denying that such differences in reach matter.

The contrast between the catalogue’s breadth and the treatment of the business cycle sharpens his objection:

Die Analyse der eigentlichen Expansionskonjunktur und Krise, also jener Erscheinung, die man sonst Konjunktur und Krise nennt, ist auf S. 294—297 zusammengedrängt.

English translation: The analysis of the expansionary boom and crisis proper, that is, of the phenomenon which is otherwise called boom and crisis, is compressed into pp. 294—297.

Haberler’s final move prevents the dispute from becoming merely terminological. Heinrich anticipates criticism that his concept of fluctuation is too broad; Haberler replies that economists need not prohibit anyone from choosing broad definitions. The issue is whether those definitions generate knowledge. Their extension can instead make it easier to fill pages without corresponding analytical work.

Hoffen wir, daß der Verfasser, dem man ja großen Fleiß und schriftstellerisches Talent nicht absprechen kann, bald zur Einsicht kommen wird, daß es ein unnützes Beginnen ist, gewöhnlichen Lehrbuchstoff in eine »universalistische« Phraseologie zu übersetzen!

English translation: Let us hope that the author, to whom one certainly cannot deny great diligence and literary talent, will soon come to the realization that it is a useless undertaking to translate ordinary textbook material into a "universalist" phraseology!

The review’s methodological relevance lies in its demand that crisis theory identify causal relations rather than redescribe disturbances through an organic hierarchy. Haberler acknowledges Heinrich’s industry and literary ability, but finds that the promised synthesis leaves the central explanatory task undone.