The archive.

If utility explains value, why should economists still define capital by the labor that produced it and reserve rent chiefly for land? In this 1901 proceedings paper, reprinted in 1977, Frank Albert Fetter argues that marginal value theory has left the inherited categories of distribution unreformed. His distinctive move is to connect their logical inconsistencies with commercial practice: natural resources represented by shares and bonds, public franchises, and corporate monopoly gains strain the old division between land and capital. Rather than offer a finished replacement system, he identifies where reconstruction must begin. Readers can discover why redefining capital, rent, and interest is, for Fetter, not merely a terminological exercise but a test of whether economic theory can explain returns across different kinds of wealth.

Rent appears in a business’s accounts as an expense; why should economic theory insist that it does not enter production costs? In this 1901 article, Frank Albert Fetter presses that tension against Alfred Marshall’s treatment of rent, arguing that its newer insights undermine the inherited distinction between land and capital. His distinctive test is consistency of standpoint: an owner’s income remains a user’s expense, and a claim about nature’s gifts cannot silently become a claim about market prices. Cultivated land, transport improvements, and competition between crops give the dispute concrete substance. Readers can discover how apparently technical definitions conceal shifts in perspective—and why Fetter locates the relevant production margin where an entrepreneur just covers all expenses, rather than where rent supposedly disappears.

Delivered as a rectorial address that turns Adolf Exner's plea for political education into a wider sociology of power, this lecture denies that public life can be decoded from legal formulas or liberal slogans. Wieser's target is contract theory: the state, he argues, begins not in voluntary agreement but in domination, command, and the discipline that binds scattered persons into a public body. His organizing concept is 'mass technique' — the selection, leadership, and routine that render unwieldy crowds capable of action, so that even anti-authoritarian movements reproduce hierarchy the moment they become parties. From army and election to custom, class, genius, and the modern press, he charts the layered social powers that govern a people, closing with the moral task of subordinating industrial and military force to culture, rights, and education.

Der Staat ist Herrschaft, und die Herrschaft ist nicht durch Verträge in die Welt gekommen.

English translation: “The State is dominion, and dominion did not come into the world through contracts.”

Officials and legislators must judge economic questions without necessarily possessing specialist knowledge—or knowing where to find it. In this 1901 newspaper review, Carl Menger assesses economic encyclopedias against that practical difficulty. His praise for the revised Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften centres on its organization of expertise: scholars and practitioners write on subjects they know closely, combining accessible consultation with substantial explanation. Menger writes as both reviewer and contributor, responsible himself for the article on money. His attention to Austrian participation adds a concrete test of comprehensiveness: does a German reference work adequately represent Austrian institutions and conditions? The review offers a view of Menger concerned less with expounding economic theory than with the editorial arrangements that make specialized knowledge usable in public life.

Agreement about economic ills need not imply agreement about their cause. In this short review of Adolphe Landry’s study of private property, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen brings that distinction into focus through a comparison with Wilhelm Neurath: both economists identify conflicts between private profitability and social productivity, yet reach opposing conclusions about abolishing private ownership of productive goods. Schullern respects Landry’s thoroughness while questioning the move from criticism of existing arrangements to confidence in socialism. Especially telling is his attention to Landry’s own concession that socialist organization might bring disadvantages of its own. The review offers a compact examination of what an economic diagnosis establishes—and what remains unproved when it becomes a proposal for institutional replacement.

Can an account of production and consumption remain economics if it excludes human purposes? In this short German review of the first published part of Arthur H. Gibson’s Natural economy, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen acknowledges Gibson’s precision but questions what his abstractions leave to investigate. An economy governed solely by physical laws, Schullern argues, scarcely exists in human life; even as a theoretical construction, it would belong to natural science rather than economics. Gibson’s frequent comparisons with the economy of bees give the objection a concrete setting. The review draws a pointed distinction between defining an object rigorously and establishing that it belongs to economic inquiry.

Separating the entrepreneur from the capitalist changes not only the definition of profit but also the assignment of responsibility for unjust distribution. In this brief 1902 review of Eteocle Lorini’s Il profitto, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the theoretical stakes of treating profit as specifically entrepreneurial income rather than rent. He recognizes Lorini’s independence while withholding detailed judgment on arguments that a short notice cannot adequately test. The review offers a compact encounter with a pointed claim: Lorini locates the contemporary obstacle to just distribution in the entrepreneur, not capital itself. Schullern’s measured account lets readers distinguish the interest of that conceptual shift from an endorsement of its conclusions.

Austria’s new personal income tax met government forecasts yet yielded strikingly less than its Prussian counterpart. In this brief review, Carl Menger assesses Friedrich von Wieser’s attempt to explain the gap without treating aggregate receipts as self-evident measures of wealth, administrative competence or tax morale. Menger welcomes Wieser’s effort to account for differences between the taxes, but presses two concrete reservations: the burden of yield taxes operating alongside income tax, and the need to compare the systems at similar stages of implementation. His qualified endorsement offers a compact example of his standards for fiscal comparison: before drawing conclusions about taxpayers, examine the institutions and assessment periods that produced the figures.

German agricultural cooperatives offer a promising model for Italian Tyrol’s fragmented farms—but what makes a cooperative different from any other business association? In this 1902 review of Giovanni Lorenzoni’s two-volume study, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen links that practical prospect to a precise conceptual disagreement. Against Lorenzoni’s adoption of Pantaleoni’s account, he argues that members’ social position and shared purposes constitute a historically distinctive organization, not incidental variations on a common form. His approval remains discriminating: Germany’s achievements in rural credit do not establish that cooperatives can meet every agricultural credit need. The review lets readers examine how legal structure, economic purpose, and social membership shape the case for cooperative reform—and why its usefulness must be assessed rather than assumed.

What could unite France’s revolutionary socialist groups when participation in government and the admission of trade unions and workers’ cooperatives remained contentious? In this brief 1902 review of the official proceedings of the Lyon congress, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen singles out the proposed party’s founding principles: international worker solidarity, proletarian organization, the conquest of power, and socialization of production and exchange. He acknowledges substantial disagreements without detailing them, and distinguishes these shared commitments from organizational rules shaped by French circumstances. The review offers a compact view of the programmatic basis of socialist unity—and of what Schullern chooses to leave outside that account.

Comparative economic history promises insight, but when does comparison outrun knowledge of local conditions? In this brief review of W. J. Ashley’s Surveys historic and economic, Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen pairs appreciation with methodological restraint. He finds Ashley’s discussions of settlement history especially instructive, yet notes their limited engagement with current controversies and cautions against premature, detailed parallels between France, England, India, and Japan. His selective judgments distinguish material that stimulates further inquiry from conclusions readers might too readily draw. The review offers a compact example of critical reception: an economic historian welcoming international evidence while insisting on closer study of particular circumstances.

When the state reserves an industry to itself, are its earnings simply another tax? This distinction anchors Carl Menger’s review of Otto Gerlach’s revision of the fifth edition of Wilhelm Roscher’s System der Finanzwissenschaft. Menger welcomes the edition’s greater practical usefulness but challenges Gerlach’s classification of state monopoly receipts as indirect taxes. Excluding private enterprise, he argues, secures returns for the state through a mechanism distinct from taxation—even when a monopoly also facilitates tax surcharges. His qualified defence of Roscher makes this more than an assessment of editorial improvements: the review shows why the source of public income matters, and how apparently tidy fiscal categories can obscure the economic arrangements that generate it.