Hamburg, Meissner, 1867. 784 pp., octavo 

For every German it is a saddening fact that we, the nation of 
thinkers, have so far achieved so little in the field of political 
economy. Our famous men in this line are at best compilers like 
Rau and Roscher and, where anything original is produced, we 
have protectionists like List (who, however, is said to have copied a 
Frenchman) or socialists like Rodbertus and Marx. Our standard 
political economy actually seems to have set itself the aim of 
driving into the arms of socialism all who treat the science of 
political economy seriously. Have we not seen the whole of official 
economics daring to oppose a Lassalle on the well-known and 
recognised” law on the détermination of wages, and leaving it to 
Lassalle to defend people like Ricardo against Schulze-Delitzsch and 
others‘! Alas, it is true that scientifically they could not even cope 
with Lassalle and, whatever recognition their practical endeavours 
may have won, had to endure the charge that their entire science 
consists in watering down a Bastiat’s harmonies which gloss over all 
contradictions and difficulties. Bastiat as an authority and Ricardo 
disownea -that is our official political economy in Germany today! 
But indeed, how could it be otherwise? Alas, with us_ political 
economy is a field in which nobody takes a scientific interest; it is 

either a breadwinning study for the examinations in cameralistics 
or an aid to political agitation for which the merest smattering. is 
thought sufficient. Is that the fault of our political dismember- 
ment, our unfortunately still so little developed industry, or our 
traditional dependence for this branch of science on foreign 
countries? 

In these circumstances it is always a-pleasure when a book like 
the above comes to hand, in which the author, indignantly refer- 
ring the current watered down or, as he aptly terms it, “vulgar 
political. economy” back to its classical models concluding. with 
Ricardo and Sismondi, also takes a critical attitude to the classics, 
but always endeavours to retain the path of strictly scientific analysis. 
Marx’s earlier writings, in particular the treatise on money publi-. 
shed in 1859 by Duncker in Berlin,* were already, distinguished 
by a strictly scientific spirit as much as by ruthless criticism, and to | 
our knowledge our entire official political’ economy has not 
produced anything to refute them. But if it could not cope with 
the treatise of those days, how will it fare with the 49 sheets. about 
capital now? Understand us rightly: we do not say that no objections. 
can be made to the conclusions of this book, that Marx has brought 
forward proofs that are complete; we merely say: We do not 
believe that among all our political economists one can be found 
capable of refuting them. The studies made in this book are of the 
greatest scientific subtlety. We refer in particular to the masterly, 
dialectical arrangement of the whole, to the manner in which the 
concept of the commodity is already presented as implying money 
existing in itself and how capital is developed out of money. We 
acknowledge that we regard the newly introduced category of 
surplus-value as an advance; that we do not see what can: be 
objected to the statement that not labour but labour-power appears 
on the market as a commodity; that we regard as quite in order 
the correction to Ricardo’s law of the rate of profit, that 
surplus-value must be substituted for profit. We must confess that 
we are much impressed by the sense of history which pervades the 
whole book and forbids the author to take the laws of economics 
for eternal truths, for anything but the formulations of the 
conditions of existence of certain transitory states of society; we 
would, alas, look in vain among our official economists for that 
scholarship and acumen with which the various historical states of 
society and their conditions of existence are here presented. 

Studies like that on the economic conditions and laws of slavery, 
the various forms of serfdom and bondage and the origin of free 
labour have. hitherto remained quite alien to our economic 
specialists. We would also like to hear the opinion of these 
gentlemen on the expositions given here of co-operation, division 
of labour and manufacture, machinery and large-scale industry in 
their historical and economic connections and effects; at any rate, 
they could here learn much that is new. And what in particular 
will they say of the fact which runs counter to all traditional — 
theories of free competition and which is -here nevertheless 
substantiated from official material, namely that in England, the 
fatherland of free competition, there is almost no industry left in 
-which the daily working hours are not strictly prescribed by. 
government. intervention and which. is not supervised by. factory 
inspectors?, And that nevertheless, not only ‘do the individual 
industries prosper, in line with the reduction in working hours, 
but the individual worker also produces more in the shorter hours 
than he did previously in the longer hours? | 

Alas, we cannot deny that the particularly bitter tone which the 
author uses against the official German economists is not without : 
justification. They more ‘or less all belong to the “vulgar 
economists”; they have prostituted their science for the sake of 
momentary popularity and denied its great classical exponents. 
They speak of “harmonies” and wallow in the most banal 
contradictions. May the severe lesson given them in this book serve 
to awaken them from their lethargy, to recall to them that 
political economy is not merely a milchcow providing us with butter 
but a science demanding serious and zealous application.