Engliš, Teleologische Theorie der Staatswirtschaft (1933)

Engliš’s treatise constructs a theory of public economy from the ground up by asking what kind of knowledge economic theory is. Its decisive move is to treat economics not first as causal explanation, psychology, or legal doctrine, but as a teleological ordering of contents according to ends and means. The work’s thesis is that the state economy can be understood rigorously only if “state,” “need,” “value,” “cost,” “tax,” and “ability to pay” are reconstructed as categories within a purposive system.

Die Teleologie ist zunächst eine Methode der Rationalität, eine Art des Begreifens, der Antwort auf die Frage: „Warum?“, eine Wurzel des zureichenden Grundes, um mit Schopenhauer zu sprechen.

English translation: Teleology is first of all a method of rationality, a mode of comprehending, of answering the question “Why?”, a root of sufficient reason, to speak with Schopenhauer.

This sentence gives the book its methodological key. Teleology is not a mystical reversal of causality: it is a rational method for grasping objects as intended, chosen, or subordinated to a purpose. For that reason, the “subject” of an economy need not be a psychological individual. A person, church, firm, or state can function as a logical point to which purposes are attributed. Engliš can therefore speak of the state as an economic subject without imagining it as a literal mind; what matters is that acts and resources are intelligible under a central ordering purpose.

The opening theoretical part develops the formal vocabulary of this method. Need, utility, harm, value, yield, cost, scarcity, marginal utility, and marginal cost are not yet specifically economic concepts. They are teleological categories: ways of relating something to an end. They become economic only when placed within an empirical Wirtschaft, where goods, acts, and sacrifices are organized under a determinate practical aim. This distinction prevents Engliš from reducing economics to either material objects or subjective feelings. Value is neither a property of things alone nor a mere sensation; it is a relation within purposive conduct.

The second and third parts extend the analysis from the individual economy to the classification of economic systems. The individual economy supplies the simplest model of purposive ordering, but it is not the measure of all economic life. Different economic systems are distinguished by the subject that bears the purpose, the ends pursued, and the way means are coordinated. This prepares the transition to public finance: the state economy is not a distorted household or an aggregate of private exchanges, but a distinct teleological formation.

In the fourth part, Engliš applies the theory to the state economy proper. The state’s revenues and expenditures are interpreted as means within a public purposive order. Taxation is therefore not merely coercion, nor simply a price paid for services. It is a way of assigning burdens for the realization of state purposes. This lets Engliš recast classical disputes over taxation: the crucial question is not whether a tax rate is mathematically proportional or progressive, but what principle of burden-bearing the rate expresses.

Proportionalität oder Progressivität sind keine Steuergrundsätze, sondern bestimmte Konstruktionen von Steuersätzen, die sich erst aus den Steuergrundsätzen ergeben müssen.

English translation: Proportionality or progressivity are not principles of taxation, but particular constructions of tax rates, which must first be derived from the principles of taxation.

The passage is central because it reverses a common doctrinal habit. Proportionality and progression are not foundational norms; they are secondary constructions. They acquire meaning only after one has determined the relevant principle of tax capacity.

Der allgemeine Steuergrundsatz ist die Steuertragfähigkeit, die entweder eine persönliche oder eine sachliche ist.

English translation: The general principle of taxation is ability to bear tax, which is either a personal or a material one.

Engliš accordingly distinguishes personal from objective tax-bearing capacity. Personal capacity concerns the taxpayer as a purposive subject with needs and resources; objective or material capacity attaches to taxable objects, transactions, or sources. Either may generate proportional or progressive forms, depending on the underlying teleological relation. The rate schedule is thus an instrument, not a principle.

Die Progression ist daher kein unzertrennliches Attribut der Einkommensteuer, sondern ergibt sich als Konstruktion des Steuersatzes aus den Steuergrundsätzen; sie ergibt sich immer aus dem Grundsatz der persönlichen Steuertragfähigkeit, sie kann sich aber auch — je nach der Steuermethode — aus dem Grundsatz der sachlichen Steuertragfähigkeit ergeben.

English translation: Progression is therefore not an inseparable attribute of the income tax, but arises as a construction of the tax rate out of the principles of taxation; it always follows from the principle of personal ability to bear tax, but it may also—depending on the tax method—follow from the principle of material ability to bear tax.

The relevance of the book lies in this conceptual discipline. Engliš refuses both a purely juridical theory of public finance and a private-exchange analogy in which taxes become quasi-prices. His theory asks what public purposes are being served, what means are assigned to them, and how burdens are justified within that order. The result is a systematic account of Staatswirtschaft as a rational, purposive economy whose categories must be derived from teleology before they can be applied to fiscal institutions.