Rezension: Franz Freiherr von Myrbach, Ueber Teuerung. Ein populärwissenschaftlicher Vortrag

Emil Lederer’s 1910 review of Franz Freiherr von Myrbach’s Ueber Teuerung reads a popular-scientific lecture as exposing a contradiction within capitalist economic reasoning: an observer committed to the existing order finds himself driven toward remedies implying its abolition.

The review moves from this systemic implication to Myrbach’s distinction between general monetary depreciation and particular price increases. Expanding settlement systems in place of cash payments and disproportionate gold production allegedly depreciate means of payment, with rising prices as their counterpart. Lederer endorses the causal account while preserving its distinction from sectoral forces:

Hierbei übersieht Myrbach keineswegs die Gründe für die partiellen Preissteigerungen, unter denen er in erster Linie die Syndikate und Kartelle aller Art hervorhebt.

English translation: In this Myrbach by no means overlooks the causes of the partial price increases, among which he emphasises in the first place the syndicates and cartels of every kind.

Syndicates and cartels thus explain particular increases without displacing the monetary diagnosis. Lederer likewise accepts that combating general depreciation requires a total transformation of the economic system. The review closes with more limited remedies:

Zur Bekämpfung der partiellen Teuerungen empfiehlt Myrbach die Abkehr von dem allseitigen und weitgehenden Protektionismus; hingegen hält er eine Organisation der Konsumenten für nahezu wirkungslos.

English translation: For combating the partial rises in the cost of living Myrbach recommends a turning away from comprehensive and far-reaching protectionism; an organisation of the consumers, on the other hand, he holds to be almost wholly without effect.

Its critical force lies in contrasting these policy proposals with the systemic change that Lederer sees Myrbach’s own analysis demanding.