Schwiedland, Die bisherige Entwicklung und heutige Gestaltung des Wirtschaftslebens (1917)

Schwiedland’s two Vienna lectures present economic history as a movement from small, self-sufficient units toward ever wider, more specialized, and more fragile systems of mutual dependence. The work begins from a material anthropology: human culture rests on the appropriation, transformation, and multiplication of the earth’s gifts.

Trägerin und Ernährerin des Lebens ist die Erde.

English translation: The earth is the bearer and sustainer of life.

From this premise Schwiedland constructs a stadial history. He reviews competing schemes—List, Hildebrand, Schmoller, Bücher, Philippovich, Sombart—but adopts the clearest narrative form from Bücher: house economy, city economy, national economy. The first lecture follows this sequence. In the house economy, production is directed to one’s own need; in the city economy, craft, market, and municipal regulation create a bounded circuit of exchange between town and countryside; in the national economy, the modern state organizes territory, administration, transport, money, tariffs, industry, and social policy into a single “Volkswirtschaft.”

Einfacher faßt Bücher diese Entwicklung in drei Perioden, deren jede das Leben anders gestaltet: die Haus-, die Stadt-, die Volkswirtschaft.

English translation: More simply, Bücher grasps this development in three periods, each of which shapes life differently: the household economy, the town economy, and the national economy.

The core conceptual move is to treat economy and political power as structurally intertwined. Economic areas do not merely expand; they require an organizer. The household, city, and state each impose order on otherwise dispersed activities. Hence Schwiedland is skeptical of “Weltwirtschaft” as an already achieved organic unity. World trade exists, but world organization does not.

Noch steht, mit einem Wort, keine universale Gesamtheit über den einzelnen Wirtschaften.

English translation: In a word, no universal totality yet stands above the individual economies.

The second lecture deepens this by analyzing specialization. As economies enter relations of exchange, they adapt to others and become one-sided: occupations split, professions multiply, regions specialize, and technical division of labor penetrates production. This brings higher productivity but also dependence. Schwiedland’s account of modernity is therefore double: specialization enriches humanity, yet binds every producer, consumer, region, and state into a vulnerable web.

Im Verlaufe dieser Entwicklung vermehren sich nun die Wechselwirkungen; der Umfang der Abhängigkeit wird größer, die Sonderung zwischen Erzeuger, Verkehr und Verbrauch nimmt zu, und dabei steigt die Leistungsfähigkeit der einzelnen Wirtschaften, wächst die Menge der von ihnen aneinander übertragenen Güter.

English translation: In the course of this development the interactions now multiply; the scope of dependency grows greater, the separation between producer, commerce, and consumption increases, and with it the productive capacity of the individual economies rises and the quantity of goods transferred among them grows.

He illustrates this with long passages on world markets, price formation, capital migration, industrial and agrarian zones, and the international origins of ordinary goods. The modern economy is no longer a sum of autonomous households but a dense organism of contracts, credit, transport, tariffs, banks, insurers, and states. Naumann’s formula, quoted approvingly, captures the social form of this interdependence:

Der deutsche Landmann wird abhängig vom Verkäufer in Argentinien, der Händler in der Kleinstadt vom Kaufmann in der Großstadt, der Bauer von der Kaufkraft des Städters, der Städter von der Kaufkraft des Landes, der Exporteur von der Leistung der Gewerbe seines Hinterlandes, der Importeur von Geschmack und Zahlungsfähigkeit seiner Abnehmer, der Fertigfabrikant vom Halbzeugfabrikanten, der Walzwerksbesitzer vom Kohlenbesitzer, der Mieter vom Hausbesitzer, der Hausbesitzer von der Nachfrage nach Wohnungen, der Arbeitnehmer vom Arbeitgeber, der Arbeitgeber von Zahl und Qualität der vorhandenen Arbeitskräfte, der Beamte von der Steuerkraft der Bevölkerung, der Geschäftsmann von den Vorschriften des Beamten, alle leben von allen, alle streiten mit allen, es entsteht ein Netz von Kontrakten, Verträgen, Tarifen, Gewohnheiten, Rechten, Krediten, Gesellschaften, Pflichten, wie es nie vorher in der Menschheit so verwickelt und bunt vorhanden gewesen ist.

English translation: The German farmer becomes dependent on the seller in Argentina, the trader in the small town on the merchant in the big city, the peasant on the purchasing power of the townsman, the townsman on the purchasing power of the countryside, the exporter on the output of the trades of his hinterland, the importer on the taste and solvency of his customers, the maker of finished goods on the maker of semi-finished goods, the rolling-mill owner on the coal owner, the tenant on the house owner, the house owner on the demand for dwellings, the employee on the employer, the employer on the number and quality of the available workers, the official on the taxable capacity of the population, the businessman on the regulations of the official; all live off all, all contend with all; there arises a net of contracts, agreements, tariffs, customs, rights, credits, companies, duties such as has never before existed among mankind so intricate and colourful.

Yet Schwiedland refuses the liberal inference that international division of labor will harmonize the world. His wartime context is decisive. He argues that industrial states dependent on foreign food, raw materials, markets, and capital flows are strategically exposed. The rise of industries in raw-material countries threatens older European industrial powers; imperial expansion is interpreted less as mere capitalist appetite than as a struggle for secure supplies, settlement zones, and markets. The “world economy” thus generates not pacific unity but competition among large state-imperial blocs.

The lectures culminate in a theory of rationalized economic power. Modern competition forces nations to intensify skill, organization, cheap production, technical progress, and market knowledge. The guiding impulse of the age is not simple exchange but purposeful organization:

Die Mehrung der Menschen und Kapitalien, die fortschreitende Erschließung der Schätze der Erde, die zunehmende Beherrschung der Pflanzen- wie Tierwelt, die steigende Menge der verfügbaren Naturenergien und die sich ständig erweiternden Möglichkeiten des Verkehrs dienen einer Entwicklung, deren leitender Gedanke Zweckbewußtheit, Rationalisierung, ist.

English translation: The increase of people and capital, the progressive opening-up of the treasures of the earth, the growing mastery of the plant and animal world, the rising quantity of available natural energies, and the ever-widening possibilities of commerce serve a development whose guiding idea is purposiveness, rationalization.

The World War, in Schwiedland’s view, exposes the danger of excessive inter-state dependence and accelerates a turn toward self-sufficient imperial groupings, stronger peasantries, domestic resources, and state direction. He ends by suggesting that wartime controls may survive because they reveal how public organization can subordinate private economic freedom to collective need. The final hope is not laissez-faire restoration but a more balanced ordered economy:

Hieraus können sich Einrichtungen ergeben, die dauernd beibehalten zu werden verdienen und dazu beitragen, daß die bisherige Anarchie im Wirtschaftsleben einer ausgeglicheneren Kultur weiche.

English translation: Out of this there may arise institutions that deserve to be permanently retained and that contribute to the hitherto prevailing anarchy in economic life giving way to a more balanced culture.

The work is important as a 1917 synthesis of historical economics, state theory, mercantilist revival, and wartime political economy. Its categories are marked by their period, including assumptions about race, empire, and national power, but its central insight remains historically revealing: globalization, for Schwiedland, is inseparable from specialization, dependence, state organization, and the search for security.