Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Review of Ludwig von Mises’s Die Gemeinwirtschaft (1923)

Schwiedland’s English-language review presents Mises’s study of socialism as an unusually forceful defence of capitalism within German-speaking economic debate. It moves from intellectual context to economic calculation, historical and ethical arguments, and finally the book’s scope and reception. Its opening contrasts the influence of socialism in Germany and Eastern Europe with the weakness of German liberalism. Opposition to Marxism, Schwiedland stresses, need not imply support for liberalism: nationalist alternatives such as Spengler’s “true Socialism” also reject it. Against this background, Mises’s intervention acquires its significance:

He now makes a more severe attack on the Socialist ideal than has ever been made before in any German book.

The review’s central exposition shifts the evaluation of economic systems from inequality alone to productive capacity. In Schwiedland’s account of Mises, the coexistence of wealth and poverty does not establish capitalism’s failure; the decisive question is whether socialism could improve labour efficiency and provide more goods. The calculation argument then supplies a distinct objection: market prices, formed through exchange, furnish the standards necessary for rational production.

In a Socialist society, where there are no prices, there would be no measure of value for commercial and technical reckoning.

Schwiedland treats this absence as a fundamental obstacle to realizing the socialist ideal, rather than merely a problem of administration. He next reports Mises’s rejection of historical inevitability: neither class struggle nor the growth of trusts establishes that socialism must succeed capitalism. The ethical defence of socialism likewise encounters a utilitarian response. If private property sustains greater wealth and happiness than alternative arrangements, its condemnation cannot simply be assumed.

Consumer sovereignty connects this defence of property to a particular conception of economic freedom:

Capitalist society is in reality a democracy of consumers; every penny spent is a title to an economic vote, and enterprisers must obey the wishes of the consumers.

The analogy locates effective authority in purchasing rather than ownership or workplace control. Schwiedland follows Mises in arguing that entrepreneurs are constrained by consumers, while guild-socialist demands for producer self-determination misconceive where economic choice can operate.

The closing paragraph emphasizes the breadth of Mises’s inquiry, extending to political institutions, family life, religion, labour legislation, and pensions. Schwiedland also reports praise from Heinrich Herkner, a leading representative of German university socialism, as evidence of the book’s impact beyond its natural constituency. The review’s relevance lies in this early, strongly affirmative presentation of Mises: economic calculation anchors a wider liberal challenge to socialism’s claims about productivity, historical necessity, ethics, and freedom.