Alfred Amonn, Wirtschaftspolitik auf Irrwegen (1958)

Amonn’s essay argues that economic policy loses its way when it treats the market order as an instrument for political wishes that contradict its own conditions of operation. The “Irrwege” are not merely technical mistakes, but conceptual confusions: money is mistaken for real wealth, social policy is confused with egalitarian levelling, and inheritance is treated as if it were simply an arbitrary privilege available for political redesign. Against this, Amonn defends a market-economy standpoint in which policy must respect the relation between money and goods, the functional meaning of income differences, and the juridical continuity of property.

The argument moves from monetary circulation to redistribution and finally to inheritance. In the monetary discussion, Amonn insists that money cannot be assessed apart from the goods available to meet it. Purchasing power not matched by goods is not a harmless reserve of prosperity; it becomes dangerous once it enters circulation.

Dieses Geld ist im Grunde genommen „überflüssig“ und insofern, wenn es in den Kreislauf kommt, schädlich.

English translation: This money is essentially "superfluous," and to that extent harmful once it enters into circulation.

The point is not a narrow warning against one banking practice, but a broader critique of policies that imagine demand can be created independently of real supply. Money that lacks a corresponding goods basis is not productive wealth waiting to be activated; it is a disturbance in the economic circuit.

Man verhindert dadurch, daß Geld in den Kreislauf kommt, für das Güter in ihm fehlen.

English translation: In this way one prevents money from entering circulation for which goods within it are lacking.

This passage shows Amonn’s central conceptual move: he translates political-economic questions back into the logic of the market process. A policy may appear expansive, social, or stabilizing, but if it injects claims without goods it threatens the coordination that prices and money are meant to sustain.

The same pattern governs his treatment of distribution. Amonn sharply distinguishes social assistance from the political aim of reducing differences as such. Helping the weak may be compatible with a market order; making equality of outcome an independent objective is not.

Will man den einkommenschwachen Schichten, die es nötig haben, helfen, so kann dies — und soll dies — durch sozialpolitische Maßnahmen geschehen, wie es bis anhin als Regel gegolten hat. Das ist etwas wesentlich anderes als die Umverteilung der Einkommen.

English translation: If one wishes to help the low-income strata who are in need, this can — and should — be done through social-policy measures, as has hitherto been the rule. That is something essentially different from the redistribution of incomes.

For Amonn, this distinction is decisive. Social policy is legitimate when it responds to need; it becomes an “Irrweg” when it treats unequal incomes or fortunes themselves as the evil to be corrected. For Amonn, the forced correction is itself the greater evil:

Man mag eine allzugroße Ungleichheit der Einkommensverteilung als unerwünscht oder als ein positives Übel ansehen, man wird es aber als das kleinere Übel betrachten müssen als die gewaltsamen Korrekturen, die die darauf ausgehenden finanzpolitischen Maßnahmen bedeuten, durch die das Funktionieren der Marktwirtschaft vielfach gestört wird.

English translation: One may regard an excessive inequality of income distribution as undesirable or even as a positive evil, but one will have to regard it as the lesser evil compared with the violent corrections entailed by the fiscal measures directed against it, through which the functioning of the market economy is frequently disturbed.

The essay’s relevance lies here: it is a postwar defence of the social limits of intervention, not a denial that society has obligations. Amonn’s claim is that the moral language of welfare can conceal a different project—the replacement of market criteria by political distributional preferences.

His discussion of inheritance extends the same argument into property law. He begins with the strongest case against inherited wealth—the large income that owes nothing to its recipient’s own effort or good fortune, but flows instead from bequeathed property.

Ein besonderer Fall, in dem man anderer Meinung sein könnte, ist der, wenn das größere — oft sehr große — Einkommen weder auf persönlichem Bemühen noch auf besonders günstige Umstände zurückzuführen ist, sondern auf nicht selbst erworbenen Besitz, d. h. auf Erbgang.

English translation: A special case, in which one might take a different view, is that in which the larger — often very large — income is attributable neither to personal effort nor to especially favorable circumstances, but to property not acquired by oneself, that is, to inheritance.

Yet Amonn resists treating inheritance chiefly as a fiscal or egalitarian target. To brand property income as merely “unearned,” he argues, misreads the facts, since such income too rests on a prior achievement—one counted not only as labor but as saving.

Die Unterscheidung zwischen Besitz- und Arbeitseinkommen mit der Disqualifizierung des Besitzeinkommens als arbeitslosen Einkommen wird den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen nicht gerecht. Es wird dabei übersehen, daß auch das Besitzeinkommen in der Regel auf vorausgegangenen Leistungen beruht und daß als „Leistung“ nicht nur Arbeitsleistung, sondern auch Sparleistung anzusehen ist.

English translation: The distinction between property income and labor income, with the disqualification of property income as unearned income, does not do justice to the actual circumstances. It is overlooked that property income too as a rule rests on prior achievements, and that as “achievement” one must regard not only labor but also saving.

The work’s main thesis is thus a warning against policies that invoke social purposes while undermining the institutional grammar of a market economy. Its structure is diagnostic: money, distribution, and inheritance are separate topics, yet each illustrates the same error—abstract political aims are imposed where economic and legal relations must first be understood. Amonn’s core move is to separate genuine social protection from policies of levelling and monetary illusion. In that sense, Wirtschaftspolitik auf Irrwegen remains a concise intervention in debates over the boundary between a social market economy and an interventionist state that no longer accepts market-economic discipline.