“Thus ended for the present, and most likely for ever, the attempts of the Slavonians of Germany to recover an independent national existence. Scattered remnants of numerous nations, whose nationality and political vitality had long been extinguished, and who in consequence had been obliged, for almost a thousand years, to follow in the wake of a mightier nation, their conqueror, the same as the Welsh in England, the Basques in Spain, the Bas-Bretons in France, and at a more recent period the Spanish and French Creoles in those portions of North America occupied of late by the Anglo-American race —these dying nationalities, the Bohemians, Carinthians, Dalmatians, etc., had tried to profit by the universal confusion of 1848, in order to restore their political status quo of A. D. 800. The history of a thousand years ought to have shown them that such a retrogression was impossible; that if all the territory east of the Elbe and Saale had at one time been occupied by kindred Slavonians, this fact merely proved the historical tendency, and at the same time physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue, absorb, and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbors; that this tendency of absorption on the part of the Germans had always been, and still was one of the mightiest means by which the civilization of Western Europe had been spread in the east of that continent; that it could only cease whenever the process of Germanization had reached the frontier of large, compact, unbroken nations, capable of an independent national life, such as the Hungarians, and in some degree the Poles: and that, therefore, the natural and inevitable fate of these dying nations was to allow this process of dissolution and absorption by their stronger neighbors to complete itself. Certainly this is no very flattering prospect for the national ambition of the Panslavistic dreamers who succeeded in agitating a portion of the Bohemian and South Slavonian people; but can they expect that history would retrograde a thousand years in order to please a few phthisical bodies of men, who in every part of the territory they occupy are interspersed with and surrounded by Germans, who from time almost immemorial have had for all purposes of civilization no other language but the German, and who lack the very first conditions of national existence, numbers and compactness of territory?”
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– From ‘Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany‘
April 5, 2008 at 6:57 pm
I am so confused… Whom are you trying to offend today?
April 5, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Don’t you think it’s funny?
April 5, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Proof, if it were needed, of the profound fallability of Marx as an historian and political prophet. I’m laughing, but wryly.
April 5, 2008 at 7:16 pm
And mine as a speller…
April 5, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Marxists
April 5, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Oh, I thought it was the Germans. But then I thought you might be winding up Slavs. But then I thought it might be the Germans. But of course it is the poor wee Marxists. The Prussian aristocracy loathed Marx, you know.
April 8, 2008 at 7:45 pm
On a completely unrelated subject: do you know whether there are Saints who were also economics scholars? A quick search on the Panopticon (Google) gives me San Bernardino of Siena and Sant’Antonio of Florence as economics thinkers. Some further suggestion?
April 8, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Sorry the link was: http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods8.html
April 8, 2008 at 8:34 pm
You want to be thinking more of saints who wrote about things that we consider to fall under the remit of economics.
St Bernardino and St Antonino you quote are two of those who come up in the literature over and over again. They seem to have been “discovered” at some point and so are constantly recycled through great chains of secondary citations.
They were both preachers and pastors primarily; their major works (forgive me for not going to check exactly which is whose) are many sermons (St B) and a Summa Moralis (St A) (and other things) – and they are both in very commercialised cities. So they are dealing with a different task in writing than is, say, St T in his Summa T or De Regno.
For the medievals, your best bet is to look at the works of the Norwegian scholar Odd Langholm. Re Woods, I’ll send you an article by Peter Kwasniewski if that is a real email address (it’s no longer online, alas). See also the post a wee bit down on social modernism!
Bl John Duns Scotus, St Thomas Aquinas, St Albert the Great, Leo XIII … But there were a lot of people writing who weren’t saints, or at least are unlikely to ever be canonised. Try the Langholm “straight history” books and their indices and bibliographies. Also Diane Woods Medieval Economic Thought (a Cambridge Medieval Handbook, or some such).
Chafuen, unlike Langholm, can’t remove his C20 economist’s hermeneutic lenses in reading Old Stuff, and like Roover has some agenda. Their stuff might interest you for other reasons, but if you want to know what the Dead White Guys said, then you can skip them with confidence.
Moreover, while on the whole the medievals that got round to this stuff and whose writings we have thought the free market (bearing in mind all various forms of limitation on freedom) was usually the best way we have of determining the value/price of a thing, and didn’t think it was licit to “receive more for a loan than was lent”, they disagreed on pretty much everything else. There’s a lot of slippery terminology (e.g. Chafuen, Scholastci – C16 Salamanca), and a tendency in the older texts to go from St Thomas to said Salamancans (not to be confused with the later Salmanticenses – that had me puzzled for a while).
You can tell I’m supposed to be doing something else, can’t you?
I’ll go email you that Kwasniewski article, though I hae ma doots about that address… 🙂
[edited: I’m always right. If you want that article, gies some usable address. You can always set up a random one at hotmail or yahoo :-)]
April 8, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Right. My address. Thanks.
April 9, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Don’t forget holy theologian Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1964) He is not officially a saint, but he did write an economics. You’ll find it more contemporary that the work Berenike mentions. See his “Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis.” (Vol. 15 of the “Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan”.)
April 9, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Sorry, that should be 1904-1984.
April 9, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Indeed, if one is interested in C20 writers, then there is above all Heinrich Pesch (magnum opusLehrbuche der National Oekonomie/Teaching Guide to Economics). Pesch was an economist. Have only skimmed through the condensed version of the above monster, so can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. I have an impression that that school was one favoured by PXII, but I’d have to check.(he was a pupil of Bishop Ketteler, who came up in a post a while ago)(Pesch, not PXII). And about contemporary with Pesch- Charles Antoine. Both died in the 1920s. Also there’s some recently-passed on German chap who picks up on some of their ideas, apparently, double-barrelled name, something like Oswald X-Breuning.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in Polish …
Then there’s always Belloc and Chesterton.
The relevant encyclicals, and the new Catechism of Social Doctrine.
It might be interesting to look up the “founding fathers” – de Gasperi, Schuman and Adenauer.
e.g.
http://www.degasperi.net/
Dissidents – Acton Institute, liberation theologian of your choice. 🙂
April 9, 2008 at 3:29 pm
What about St Thomas More? Can any of his political thought be described as economic?
April 9, 2008 at 3:47 pm
dunno, all I’ve read is the Sadness of Christ and A Man for All Seasons 🙂
wait, not true, i read Utopia years ago, but can’t remember much about it.
April 9, 2008 at 4:00 pm
It’s very jolly, and it certainly proposes an interesting and then-novel communitarian system. It is very down on gold and silver, which are considered shameful.
April 9, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Did you have the impression that More wasn’t, contrary to some suggestions, actually proposing this as an ideal?
April 10, 2008 at 8:43 pm
If I may, “Utopia” seems to me a collection of the mistakes of the time… in antithesis.
It is difficult to find writings on the ethical aspects of economics that, rather than expressing opinions on existing theories, foster new foundations of the discipline.
Thanks to everybody for the further suggestions.
PS. The paper “Contemporary Problems in Property in the Light of the Economic Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas” by Garrick Small, looks also interesting. Thanks.
April 10, 2008 at 9:20 pm
But the foundations are there, ethically speaking.
And insofar as current economics isn’t morally normative, then it “don’t enter intoit”. Insofar as it is, then it is going to be based on some kind of anthropology and moral theory. The chances are it is a dubious one. It’s funny how even my ethics lecturer, a pious priest, can’t shed the “law-freedom” dichotomy even when talking about eudaimonism/virtue ethics/whathaveyou.
And then if you develop a …arrrggghhh, I am so supposed to be writing somethign else.
If you want a 7-page bibliography oriented to medieval usury theory, gies a shout.