The archive.

Does the state stand above its citizens, exist through them, or serve their purposes? In this 1917 essay, Karl Pribram connects that political question to the philosophical dispute over whether universals possess reality independently of particular things. His distinction between authoritarianism, nationalism, and individualism makes wartime disagreements over treaties, national self-determination, and moral responsibility intelligible as conflicts about who can act and whose purposes count. His associations of these outlooks with Russia, Germany, and Britain remain qualified wartime interpretations, not established national characteristics. The sharpest tension concerns nationalism: participation in a collective will can promise agency while demanding conformity. Readers can discover how apparently shared political language conceals incompatible understandings of obligation—and where Pribram himself recognizes the danger of turning sociological explanation into metaphysical speculation.

In the Serbia occupied by Austria-Hungary during the First World War, economic administration meant commanding labour, sowing, deliveries, prices, and rationing—an entire agrarian society, stripped of nearly its whole able-bodied male population, disciplined toward higher yields. Drawing on a wartime study journey, Pribram treats this coercive apparatus as both military necessity and a rehearsal for postwar policy, insisting that extraction must not destroy Serbia's future usefulness as neighbour, producer, and market. He credits the harvest-utilization agency and the licensing Warenverkehrszentrale, yet warns that a military office cannot replace merchants without severing the networks on which peacetime trade depends. Statistics, requisition, monopoly, and currency control here become instruments of empire, where economic policy and foreign policy flow together into one.

Eine verständnisvolle Organisation, welche die Kräfte des Handels nicht völlig unterbindet, kann der künftigen Friedenswirtschaft wenigstens diese Kräfte erhalten — ein überflüssiger Zwang kann sie völlig vernichten.

English translation: “An understanding organisation that does not entirely stifle the forces of trade can preserve at least these forces for the future peace economy — a superfluous coercion can destroy them completely.”

Wartime scarcity gives Eugen von Philippovich a concrete test for economic method in this 1917 review of the introductory volume of Karl Diehl’s Theoretische Nationalökonomie. Does the dependence of individuals on a legally organized economy make individual needs and incentives an inadequate starting point for theory? Philippovich accepts the importance of institutions but argues that wartime provisioning and price movements also reveal the force of scarcity and private interest. His defense of abstraction is selective, not a blanket endorsement of theoretical schools. Alongside this methodological dispute runs a teaching problem: a textbook rich in scholarly controversy may reward experienced economists while leaving beginners without a clear orientation. The review shows precisely where Philippovich’s appreciation of Diehl’s scholarship parts company with his assessment of its explanatory and instructional value.

In the winter of 1813, Austrian troops occupied Geneva, and a provisional government that 'governed nothing' found itself bearing the costs of another's army. Rappard reconstructs how the newly resurrected Republic financed its extraordinary military burdens between 1814 and 1816 — through Austrian war contributions, loans floated with the old Société Économique and private citizens, and a striking campaign of patriotic donations that drew gifts from children, rural communes, and Genevans abroad. His centerpiece is the wealth tax of September 1815, a progressive levy collected by secret honor declaration into a sealed 'coffre mystérieux,' a device whose novelty shaped later fiscal debate. Filling what he calls a strange gap in the history of a much-studied city, Rappard turns dry ledgers of loans and levies into a study of civic confidence under occupation.

Ce Coffre sera disposé de manière, à ce qu'on ne sache point, ce que le contribuable y versera.

English translation: “This chest shall be arranged in such a way that no one knows what the contributor deposits in it.”

An economist need not found a school to shape a discipline. In this 1917 obituary, Alfred Amonn locates Eugen von Philippovich’s achievement in bringing Austrian theory, historical research, and practical social reform into relation. His tribute centres on a productive tension: reform should substantially improve workers’ lives without revolutionary rupture, while economic policy must remain sensitive to circumstances rather than promise universal remedies. Amonn connects these commitments to Philippovich’s textbook, teaching, and work on social insurance and labour protection. Yet admiration leaves room for criticism of the textbook and recognition of his limited political influence. The result is a revealing account of what Amonn valued in an economist: not doctrinal allegiance, but disciplined judgment, sympathy informed by analysis, and the ability to make rival intellectual traditions cooperate.

A single analytical question organizes this 1917/18 journal reply to Franz Oppenheimer: does private ownership of land amount to a "Bodenmonopol"? Schumpeter deliberately brackets Oppenheimer's sociology, capital-interest theory, and reading of Ricardo to insist that land may be scarce, privately appropriated, historically bound up with force, and rent-yielding without being monopolized in any technical sense. Monopoly, he argues, is not mere ownership or unequal bargaining strength but a specific form of price formation—control of supply, by one actor or by tacit combination among sellers, producing a surplus that competition would exclude. He dismantles Oppenheimer's three supports in turn: the one-sided urgency of the landless, the non-reproducibility of land, and large landed property. Ground rent, he concludes, needs no monopoly theory; it follows from scarcity and marginal productivity alone.

Großeigentum mag ein Uebel sein; aber mit dem Monopolgedanken läßt sich die Natur dieses Uebels nicht erfassen.

English translation: “Large-scale landownership may be an evil; but the nature of this evil cannot be grasped by means of the concept of monopoly.”

Peace may end a war without ending its economic commands. In this lecture, delivered in 1916 and published in 1917, Karl Pribram asks what could turn emergency rationing, compulsory production, and centralized purchasing into permanent institutions. His distinctive concern is not simply whether administration works better than competition, but whose purposes economic life serves: individual welfare or the power and security of the state. Cartels created for private advantage become instruments of public allocation; profitable production need not meet the most urgent needs. Following these concrete tensions, readers can discover why Pribram makes lasting economic compulsion depend both on continued international hostility and on an ethic that teaches citizens to regard sacrifice as duty. His conditional argument keeps necessity distinct from endorsement.

Was das Eigeninteresse schuf, wird nun dem Staatsinteresse dienstbar gemacht.

English translation: “What self-interest created is now made to serve the interest of the state.”

Can economic independence be secured through dependence on distant colonies? In this 1917 article, Richard Thurnwald argues that Germany’s essential supplies must be protected from potentially hostile world markets, while less consequential commerce can remain international. His case turns on concrete connections: tropical oilseeds sustain livestock at home, and an Ottoman route toward East Africa promises access to colonial resources. Yet the security he envisages requires more than transport and agricultural investment. Compulsory indigenous labor and racially ordered schemes of supervision underpin his projected expansion of production. Read together, these proposals expose the tension within his program: reducing Germany’s vulnerability means extending control over other territories and peoples. The article offers a specific view of how wartime supply anxieties could become an argument for colonial coercion.

What makes a farm, a mine, a waterfall, and an urban site members of the same economic category? In this brief discussion of Richard T. Ely’s paper, originally published in 1917 and reprinted here in 1977, Frank Albert Fetter questions the inherited distinction between land and capital. Cultivation complicates the classification of land as natural; extracted ore exposes a shift from origin to transportability as the dividing criterion. Fetter’s alternative is to examine the qualities and separable uses of material things rather than classify whole objects. His response offers a compact demonstration of how an apparently familiar category can conceal incompatible standards—and why, in his view, that confusion obstructs both rent theory and clear thinking about property legislation.

Landed property is not an economic concept, but a juristic one.

When the Clam ministry fell in the summer of 1917, most read its collapse as proof that parliamentary government in Austria was impossible; Schumpeter drew the opposite lesson. His memorandum to the cabinet fuses peace policy, national compromise, and fiscal stabilization into a single strategy for saving the monarchy. Peace, he argues, is not a sentimental demand but a condition of state survival: passivity will leave Austria a German satellite, powerless at the eventual settlement. The nationalities question becomes an international one, answerable only by a federalizing autonomy for Bohemia and the South Slavs that preserves the dynasty. He warns against a customs union with Berlin, rejects rule by bureaucratic evasion, and demands a ministry of politically gifted men able to command court, parliament, and press.

Sonst wird Österreich zerrissen und willenlos auf der Friedenskonferenz eine jämmerliche Rolle spielen.

English translation: “Otherwise Austria will play a wretched role at the peace conference, torn and without a will of its own.”

A coherent city cannot be designed into existence while land and credit reward fragmented, speculative building: this is the tension at the centre of Karl Pribram’s 1917 essay. He approaches urban planning through housing economics, asking what power municipalities need to turn architectural intentions into durable provision. Garden cities interest him not simply for their greenery, but for communal control of land; building regulations expose the limits of policing separate properties without directing their relationships. His distinctive concern is the gap between a unified plan and the institutions capable of sustaining it. Readers can discover how mortgage finance, ownership rights, and knowledge of rents and migration enter the making of urban form—and why Pribram seeks collective coordination without wholly sacrificing individual initiative.

How could readers navigate the accumulating mass of wartime legislation? In this brief 1917 review of the second edition of H. Jünger’s Kriegsgesetze, Emil Lederer judges the handbook by its practical organization: chronological listings, subject groupings and an alphabetical index. His praise identifies a concrete problem—the need to find one’s way through state regulation of the economy alongside changes in private and public law. He also marks the collection’s limits: coverage ends on 1 July 1916, and legislation from individual states is confined to Prussian decrees. The review offers a compact example of Lederer’s attention to the usability, scope and boundaries of a legal reference work.