Great Nations at Peril

175 Pages·2015·6.54 MB·English

by  Jürgen Backhaus (eds.)

The European Heritage in Economics
and the Social Sciences
Volume 17
Series Editor
Jürgen Backhaus
Krupp Chair in Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology
University of Erfurt
Erfurt, Germany
The European heritage in economics and the social sciences is largely locked in
languages other than English. Witness such classics as Storch’s Cours d’Economie
Politique, Wicksell’s Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen and Geld, Zins und Güt-
erpreise or Pareto’s Trattato di Sociologia Generale. Since about 1937, partly caused
by the forced exodus of many scholars from the German language countries and the
international reactions to this event, English has become the undisputed primary
language of economics and the social sciences. For about one generation, this lan-
guage shift did not result in a loss of access to the European non-English sources.
However, after foreign language requirements were dropped as entry pre-requisites
for receiving the PhD at major research universities, the European heritage in eco-
nomics and the social sciences has become largely inaccessible to the vast majority
of practicing scholars.
In this series, we hope to publish works that address this problem in a threefold
manner. An aspect of the European heritage in a language other than English should
be critically documented and discussed, reconstructed and assessed from a modern
scientific point of view, and tested with respect to its relevance for contemporary
economic, social, or political discourse.
We welcome submissions that fit this bill in order to make the European heritage in
economics and the social sciences available to the international research community
of scholars in economics and the social sciences.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5902
Jürgen Backhaus
Editor
Great Nations at Peril
1 3
Editor
Jürgen Backhaus
University of Erfurt
Erfurt
Germany

ISSN 1572-1744 ISSN 2197-5892 (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-10054-8 ISBN 978-3-319-10055-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-10055-5
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
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Contents
1 T roubling Thoughts in Troubled Times ................................................. 1
Jürgen G. Backhaus
2 Troubles on Statistical Lies ..................................................................... 5
Gerhard Scheuerer
3 Great Nations in Peril—Rise and Fall of Prussia.................................. 21
Hans A. Frambach
4 Friedrich List’s “Great Nations”: Mobilising Capital for
Quality Labour ......................................................................................... 37
Arno Mong Daastøl
5 A usterity Versus Productive Investment: Two Traditions
in Capital Formation and Growth .......................................................... 77
Arno Mong Daastøl
6 W hy Greece Should be Bailed Out ......................................................... 119
Juergen G. Backhaus
7 A gricultural Subsidies in the USA—History, Implications,
and Critiques ............................................................................................ 123
Kathleen Leary
8 Jacob Bielfeld’s “On the Decline of States” (1760) and Its
Relevance for Today ................................................................................. 133
Erik S. Reinert
v
Contributors
Juergen G. Backhaus Krupp Chair in Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology,
University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
Arno Mong Daastøl Economics and Advanced Transportation, Innotrans,
Utsiktsveien 34, NO-1410 Kolbotn, Norway
Hans A. Frambach Department of Economics, Schumpeter School of Business
& Economics, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
Kathleen Leary The University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
Erik S. Reinert Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia
The Other Canon Foundation, Norway, Norway
Gerhard Scheuerer Gerhard Scheuerer University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany
vii
Chapter 1
Troubling Thoughts in Troubled Times
Jürgen G. Backhaus
Arthur Moeller van den Broeck, Oswald Spengler, Rudolf Steiner: these names
call up associations with troubled times—and then the titles also of their books,
“The Third Reich,” “The Demise of the Occident”. Yet, what these authors exactly
stood for is known to only very few, and it is therefore the purpose of this article
in the Heilbronn tradition to provide a concentrated excerpt in English, present a
clear analysis, and try a test for current usefulness. Before, however, let us get to
know our three protagonists. Arthur Moeller van den Broeck was born in Solingen
in 1876 and died in Berlin in 1925. He did not graduate from academic high school
but continued his education on his own in Berlin, Paris, and also Italy. In 1914, he
voluntarily joined the army, but he was always engaged in literary projects at the
same time, editing such journals as “The Conscience” (“Das Gewissen”) or found-
ing the so-called Club of June. Although Hitler took the title of his most important
book to describe his own project, Moeller van den Broeck detested him a primitive
proletarian. He committed suicide.
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born in 1880 in Blankenburg on the Harz
mountains and died in 1936 in Munich. He spent some time as a private teacher
when his mother died and became financially independent. His “Demise of the Oc-
cident,” which reflects Goethe’s philosophy of nature, appeared in 1918 (Volume 1)
and 1922 (Volume 2). In 1919, he published another very popular book, “Prussia
and Socialism.” As Moeller van den Broeck propagated a kind of German bolshe-
vism, Spengler instead stood for Prussian socialism.
This cannot be said about Rudolf Steiner at all. He stood for a radical individual-
ism based on education. Rudolph Josef Lorenz Steiner was born in 1861 in Kraljiv-
ic, today in Croatia, and died in 1925 in Dornach near Basel. Since his teachings
created an organized group of followers and a string of institutions, he may be
considered as the most influential of the three.
J. G. Backhaus ()
Krupp Chair in Public Finance and Fiscal Sociology, University of Erfurt,
Nordhäuser Str. 63, 99089 Erfurt, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 1
J. Backhaus (ed.), Great Nations at Peril, The European Heritage in Economics
and the Social Sciences 17, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-10055-5_1
2 J. G. Backhaus
The book “The Third Reich” is available in an attractive reprint published by
Uwe Berg in 2006 with a frontispiece showing the bow-tied author. The book is
dedicated to a war comrade, Heinrich von Gleichen. By explanation, the author
writes in the preface “at the time we resolved, that this war had been our educational
war. Today we ask in doubt, really? And we hope with bitter resolve, it must have
been.”
Moeller must have been an excellent communicator. The nine chapter headings,
seven in addition to introduction and the final chapter “The Third Reich” are all
attributes which characterize the Third Reich, but it is not proletarian. Hence, it is
revolutionary, socialist, liberal, democratic, reactionary, and conservative. On the
issue of proletarianism, we read, “and it is proletarian, that they do not even con-
ceive of the idea, that there are in Germany people, who value the movement as
higher, different and spiritual. They should be impressed by the fact that there are
people in Germany who do not want to be proletarians by any means nor do they
tolerate the thought that they belong to a nation which is proletarian from now on.”
The chapter entitled reactionary has the Leitmotiv, “politics can be reverted, his-
tory cannot.” We read, the reactionary insists on his point of view. He is convinced
that he only revises the old forms, and everything will be again as it has been. He
has no inclination to accept the new forms. He has too much character for compro-
mise. In his life, he bets on the whole and not the part.
His conclusion of the final chapter is a masterpiece in political incorrectness.
We are not thinking of the Europe of today, which is too despicable to deserve
any valuation. We think of the Europe of the past, and of that which perhaps may
develop and can be saved for tomorrow. And we think of the Germany of all times,
the Germany of the past 2000 years, the Germany of a permanent present which
lives in this spiritual but has to be secured in reality, and this can only be done in
the political way.
The animal in men is creeping forward. Africa begins to darken in Europe. We
have to be the guardians of our values.
Spengler describes his demise of the Occident as a sketch of morphology of hu-
man history, and a Leitmotiv from Goethe indeed suggests that similar structures
may be discerned in a vast array of different circumstances and experiences. And
Spengler insists that it is not a projection of his own desires and convictions, but
something that is hidden in the depth of human history. We find here the method of
discovery and understanding which Goethe clearly inspired, and which in a much
stronger form will have to be recognized when we deal with Rudolf Steiner. He
further explains that there is no science of history, which is what he does, but ap-
proaches signs of history which establishes the facts (Spengler 1923a).
His skepticism of modern science also extends to psychology. It misses the liv-
ing soul, the inner self, that what makes us love and feel and is altogether too mech-
anistic (Spengler 1923b).
He concludes that the platonic concept of life has already vanished with the ad-
vent of the stoa and given way to the Arabic Manichaeism of spirit and soul. This he
likewise finds in the Talmud and Avesta.
1 Troubling Thoughts in Troubled Times 3
More specifically, while at the demise of the Roman Empire strong military lead-
ers led substantial armies and conquered people who barely resisted, there is hardly
a difference between a Septimius Severus and Allerich, around 1500, family dy-
nasties emerge first in India in the Punjab, then in China, and finally in Egypt and
Greece. Likewise, Napoleon conceived of himself as the founder of a new family
dynasty after the Merovingians, Karolingians, and Karpetingians (Spengler 1923c).
At the same time, the progress of civilization and intellectual refinement leads to
infertility. While the peasant would see to it that he and his ground would further be
cultivated and therefore would always have children, the intellectual mind finds rea-
son why children are rather unnecessary (Spengler 1923d). And again the cautions
against modern sciences. Entire fortunes of race could have passed along without
leaving any traces in the graves, where scholars found the skeletons of boys and
men and drew their conclusions (Spengler 1923e). The emergence of modern lan-
guages such as German, English, Italian, French and Spanish, which started from an
agrarian base, now showed something new in times of pronunciation and choice of
words: metric, based on grammar, embellished with style (Spengler 1923f).
Yet the language of science based on Latin remains, and so a divide emerges.
Here the language of an evermore refined life, and there the language of science
(Spengler 1923g).
The complete works of Rudolf Steiner are now available in a very compact edi-
tion of the publisher Zweitausendundeins containing some 1150 pages. There is no
benefit to the reader of editing or providing an index, just the convoluted print.
My interpretation anchors in the preface to his book on the Social Question, the
preface to the edition covering the print run of 41,000–80,000.
The Social Question in the German language area was raised essentially by Bis-
marck who went before the imperial diet and asked for instructions. The answer
provided by scientists such as Gustav von Schmoller and Adolf Wagner essentially
came down to creating insurance-like institutions based on the classical mathemati-
cal insurance (Backhaus 1997, 2005a, b).1
Rudolf Steiner takes a totally different tack. As far as he is concerned, the Social
Question generally conceived as having come about as a consequence of the In-
dustrial Revolution and the migration of people from the country where they were
embedded in systems of social security to the city, where they were free to marry
but also free to die, is seen by him as the preponderance of the state in human edu-
cation. What had been perfectly fitting in the time of the scholar seems no longer
adequate. Rather, the school needs to be emancipated from the state and the teachers
no longer should be civil servants but should be free to determine the focus of their
work and to educate the students who have been entrusted do them. Here, he does
not strive for perfection, but insists that the best should be done that can be done
under the circumstances.
1 Schmoller describes the new institutions in the third volume of his four-volume “Grundriss.” I
have myself documented the discussion of the Social Question in two volumes, published in the
Journal of Economic Studies (Backhaus 2005a, b). Likewise, the different positions by Schmoller
and Wagner are documented in my essays on social security and taxation (Backhaus 1997).