Nietzsche and the German Historical School of Economics

8. Conclusion and Notes on Further Research.

Marxist critique of Nietzsche often characterises him as an apologetic of liberalism and capitalism. We have attempted to show that this is a fundamentally wrong interpretation. Indeed, not only liberalism itself, but also its philosophical foundations are at cross-purposes with Nietzsche’s basic philosophy. Typically, the appreciation of Nietzsche as a true Third Way social scientist in the German economic tradition has been lost in the prolonged crossfire between liberalism and communism.

While we now have joined ranks with countless ‘cranks’ in securing Nietzsche for one cause or another, we believe this to be one of the few occasions on which his writings have been evaluated from the perspective of an economist (Ottmann 1987 is one of them). This paper is, however, not intended as a final verdict on the matter, but rather as a prelude for further analysis. There are immediate questions whose answers remain beyond the scope of this essay, which would be interesting topics for future studies. We only analysed a very small portion of his substantial literary legacy, and the obvious continuation would be the task of testing our preliminary conclusion against this vast body of writings. Given Nietzsche’s rhetorical gymnastics, this could be a monumental task. We have already noted Nietzsche’s classicist heritage on several occasions – and from Thucydides to Aristotle, from Xenophon to Pericles, the intellectual echoes of ancient Athenians are indeed prominent in his writings – and the next logical step would be to connect the plethora of existing studies on this subject to our theory of Nietzschean Kathedersozialismus. Upon browsing though the vast body of secondary literature on Nietzsche, one clearly sees the uneven distribution of their topics. Countless scholars have discussed his connection to the Ancient Greeks, but few indeed have evaluated his contributions to the fields of economics and political science.

While Nietzsche for years has been thought to be a philosophical pariah, we have sought to establish his connection to the German tradition of appreciative and verstehende economics. Nietzsche’s influence on his Zeitgeist was, as other papers in this volume have explored, considerable. While we have placed Nietzsche’s economic policies under an overall heading, his political writings are still a unique amalgamation of two millennia of Western political theory, and what ideas he took from where remains contested. In the end our contribution has been to place Nietzsche’s economic policies within the context of an existing school of political economy. His legacy remains that of an intrepid, if somewhat esoteric statecrafter.

As a final note it should be said that the Kathedersozialist agenda, and indeed the entire German tradition, has gained new relevance in the past years, as it becomes clear that our times also have a Soziale Frage. Haselbach’s statement about the Kathedersozialisten seems highly relevant also for Nietzsche:

[His] work tried to re-write liberal economic theory with a distinctively anti-capitalist stance, albeit by reinvigorating the liberal utopia, and by reinterpreting the notion of capitalism. This theoretical approach can be characterised as a theory of a third path between capitalism and communism (Haselbach 2000:64).

The gap between rich and poor has, however, this time increased in scale, as the task at hand is one of solving fundamental international discrepancies arising from globalisation, rather than re-evaluating domestic policy. The question to ask is therefore why most of the World’s countries are poorer today than ten years ago, and what can be done about it. In our post-Cold War era, the true Third Way can perhaps provide us with the best tools for the job.

Bibliography

Bell, John Fred 1953: A History of Economic Thought. New York: The Ronald Press.

Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky und G. Freytag.