Gustav Gross · 1883
Gustav Gross’s review assesses Baerenbach’s 1882 book against its promise to orient readers within contemporary social-scientific schools and systems. His central objection is the gap between systematic exposition and a compilation of critical surveys:
Der Verf. bietet uns eine Reihe von kritischen Studien, welche nur insoferne zusammenhängen, als die in denselben besprochenen Arbeiten verwandten Inhalts sind.
English translation: The author offers us a series of critical studies which are connected only in so far as the works discussed in them are related in content.
Gross follows the book’s sequence to show why thematic proximity does not produce conceptual coherence. The opening discussion of socialism, communism, social policy, and social democracy summarizes or extensively quotes works by Bamberger, Schmoller, and Schäffle without achieving the clarification its heading promises. The following three sections receive qualified praise for their summaries of Comte, Spencer, Schäffle, and Lilienfeld. Yet Gross questions the placement of an encomium to Friedrich List within the history and methodology of sociology: acknowledging List’s challenge to the Smithian school does not establish his relevance to modern sociology.
The same distinction between useful reporting and substantive contribution governs Gross’s account of the remaining sections. Social pathology gives priority to the labour question, but offers little beyond a discussion of F. A. Lange and notes on an anonymous English physician’s social doctrine. Extracts from Samter represent the natural theory of society; Samter and Laveley dominate the treatment of property. Gross’s judgment on the latter is blunt:
Die eigenen Zugaben des Verf. sind aber auch hier geradezu verschwindend.
English translation: The author's own contributions, however, are here too downright negligible.
The section on social ethics draws on Schmoller’s and Brentano’s historical studies of small industry and labour relations, then surveys Oettingen’s moral statistics. An appendix discusses historical works by Dühring and Mehring alongside criminal statistics. For Gross, its status as an appendix appears arbitrary, reinforcing his objection to the book’s organization.
He then tests the claim that essays previously published in Unsere Zeit have been thoroughly revised. Baerenbach’s knowledge of Lilienfeld stops at the first three volumes, although the fourth, on social physiology, appeared in 1879. This specific omission supports the broader charge that republication has not yielded an adequately updated survey.
Gross concludes by distinguishing public instruction from advancement of scholarship:
Der Laie mag trotzdem aus der Lektüre dieses Sammelwerkes vielen Nutzen ziehen. Eine positive Förderung der Wissenschaft können wir aber nicht davon erwarten.
English translation: The layman may nevertheless derive much benefit from reading this collective work. A positive advancement of the science, however, we cannot expect from it.
The review thus grants the essays value for nonspecialist readers while demanding more from a comprehensive social-scientific work: clarified concepts, an intelligible relation among subjects, current coverage, and conclusions beyond the reproduction of existing literature. Its significance lies in this explicit separation of accessible orientation from original scientific contribution.
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