Viktor Mataja on Pierson’s Leerboek der Staathuishoudkunde (1885)

Viktor Mataja’s review evaluates the first volume of N. G. Pierson’s economics textbook, published in Haarlem in 1884. Its strongly favourable judgment rests on Pierson’s ability to combine theoretical depth, accessible exposition, and a synthesis of increasingly dispersed economic research. Mataja treats this synthetic achievement as an intellectual contribution in its own right: a comprehensive textbook can connect specialised investigations and expose gaps concealed by a predominantly monographic literature. He presents Pierson’s intended readership as both advanced students and educated readers:

Das Werk soll also nach der Absicht des Verfassers ein wissenschaftliches, zugleich aber ein populäres im höheren Verstande dieses Wortes sein.

English translation: The work is thus intended by its author to be a scientific one and at the same time a popular one in the higher sense of that word.

The review proceeds from this assessment to the textbook’s organisation, then examines its theories of value and distribution before turning to money and banking. Pierson plans four divisions—exchange value, media of exchange, production and consumption including the social question, and public revenue—but only the first two appear in the volume reviewed. Mataja praises the preference for introducing general considerations through concrete problems rather than extending the preliminary methodological discussion.

The placement of exchange value at the beginning initially appears unfamiliar from the perspective of German economics, where general theories of goods and use value ordinarily supply its foundations. Yet Pierson subsequently distinguishes economic from non-economic goods and discusses value independently of exchange. For Mataja, this makes the arrangement a productive reconciliation: it retains the outward organisation customary in English and French economics without sacrificing the deeper foundations associated with German scholarship. He especially welcomes Pierson’s agreement on central questions with the theoretical movement originating in Austria.

The decisive conceptual move is to integrate distribution into the theory of exchange value:

Wie er richtig bemerkt, ist jeder Versuch, den Tauschwerth zu erklären, zugleich ein Versuch, Licht über die Vertheilung des gesellschaftlichen Einkommens zu verbreiten.

English translation: As he rightly observes, every attempt to explain exchange value is at the same time an attempt to shed light upon the distribution of social income.

Mataja regards this connection as the route beyond contradictions between value theory and distribution theory in English and French economics. Pierson applies his distinctive price theory successively to land rent, house rent, interest, entrepreneurial profit, and wages, followed by goods’ money prices—a final topic whose connection Mataja finds looser. The reviewer also values the pedagogical use of practical questions: overseas competition clarifies land rent, while the housing question illuminates house rent.

His treatment of interest reveals both theoretical sympathy and a significant reservation. Pierson explains interest as payment for the use of capital, rather than as a deduction from wages. Mataja accepts the importance of this explanation but insists that it does not settle the social question of who should receive capital’s benefits:

Freilich ist hierbei zu beachten, dass der sociale Kernpunkt des Capitalzinsproblems damit nicht erschöpft, sondern dann in der Frage gelegen ist, ob die aus dem Capitale solcherart entstehenden Vortheile vermöge des Privatbesitzes Einzelnen zufließen sollen oder ob es nicht möglich und wünschenswerth wäre, jene Vortheile der Gesamtheit zuzuwenden.

English translation: Admittedly it must here be noted that the social nub of the problem of capital interest is not thereby exhausted, but lies rather in the question whether the advantages arising in this manner from capital ought, by virtue of private ownership, to accrue to individuals, or whether it would not be possible and desirable to turn those advantages to the community as a whole.

This distinction between explaining an income category and justifying its private appropriation gives the review particular conceptual interest. A price-theoretical account of interest leaves open the institutional and distributive evaluation of capital ownership.

The monetary division surveys coinage systems, banking, bills of exchange, exchange rates, and monetary stability. Mataja notes the surprising omission of Austrian conditions. He then reconstructs Pierson’s argument for bimetallism across a large international area: deviations from the legal gold–silver ratio would supposedly correct themselves through changes in the metals used for payment and offered on the market, thereby restricting exchange-rate fluctuations. Here his approval becomes explicit dissent, though he does not develop an alternative argument:

Wir können diese Argumentation zwar nicht ganz überzeugend finden, müssen jedoch darauf verzichten, hier unsere Gegengründe zu entwickeln.

English translation: We cannot indeed find this line of argument entirely convincing, but must forgo developing our counter-arguments here.

The closing hope that Pierson will complete the textbook preserves the review’s overall esteem. Its significance lies in a selective, theoretically engaged appraisal: Mataja endorses the integration of value and distribution and the explanatory strength of Austrian-oriented analysis, while retaining independent reservations about monetary policy and the social implications of private capital ownership.