Preface

This English translation of my Die Lehre von der Wirtschaft is based on the 9th German edition (Eugen-Rentsch Verlag, Zurich, 1961). The appearance of the work in the United States some twenty-five years after its original publication in German may be the proper occasion on which to relate its rather tumultuous history. The original draft was composed during a period of exile in Turkey in 1936 and was published in Vienna (Julius Springer Verlag) shortly before the National Socialist takeover of Austria. It was a publication which properly should have excited the deepest suspicion of the agents of the brown totalitarians. Nevertheless, it managed for a time to avoid outright proscription and enjoyed a modest clandestine circulation in certain areas where the swastika flew. Ultimately, the Gestapo, with its sure nose for intellectual contraband, broke into the cellars of the Vienna publisher and confiscated the remaining copies. Thus the book, like its author, was forced to emigrate and had the good fortune to be adopted by a Swiss firm. A Czech and an Hungarian translation were prepared, but before they could be published the political upheavals which followed in the wake of Nazi conquests silenced this antitotalitarian voice.

A better fate was reserved to the French translation which was published in 1940 in Paris (Librairie de Medicis) under the title Explication économique du monde moderne. Perhaps “published” is not quite the right word to describe what happened to the book. Arrangements for its distribution had been completed by May of 1940, but shortly afterwards Paris capitulated to German troops. This appeared to doom the book, particularly since a very frank foreword and final chapter had been prepared for the French edition wherein the description of the “ère des tyrannies” left little to the imagination. Luckily, however, the book had received the imprimatur of the French authorities prior to the German invasion. Secured with this flimsy document, the courageous and inventive directress of the Paris publishing house managed to sell it under the very nose of the Gestapo on the pretext that it was of no concern or interest to the “Kommandantur.” No doubt she had also counted on the German censor’s regarding it as a completely harmless economics textbook, like so many others of its kind, and failing to note the concentrated poison of antitotalitarian resistance which was concealed within it. This expectation proved to be well founded, although to anyone familiar with the French version, the perpetration of such a deception over a period of years must appear miraculous. Despite the fact that the book, understandably, could not be advertised or promoted in any way, the publisher’s initial supplies were quickly exhausted. The probable explanation of this miracle is that the German censors were too uneducated to understand the book, while those Germans who understood it were civilized enough to rejoice at such a discovery and not to betray it. There were, indeed, many Germans who reported in later years of how happy they were during their Paris sojourn to come upon the book. Habent sua fata libelli.

The need for a book such as this, it seems to me, is a twofold one.

There is, first, the pedagogical need of a coherent description of the whole of the economic process. Such a description should be scrupulously scientific. But it should also be adapted to the understanding, interests, and experience of people of average education. Certainly one cannot complain today of a dearth of substantial economics treatises for the advanced student. What had been lacking, however, when I decided to write this book more than thirty years ago, was a text on the elementary level which, while avoiding superficiality, would reveal to the reader all those complex relationships which make up the ordered whole of economics and which would at the same time provide him with the incentive and the means for continuing his investigations. Whether there is still such a vacuum and, if so, whether the present work fills it, I would not venture to say. My efforts, in any case, were directed wholly to this end. It was my intention to write a book such as I would have liked to have had available in my own student days, the kind of book which, in later years, I would have liked to recommend to my students.

The second need I had in mind results from the general condition of our age, a condition so obvious that it may be described in a few words. For years the economic and social structure of the West have been in a state of severe crisis; and in this crisis traditional economic teachings have been shaken violently from their moorings, have been increasingly called into question. What, really, is left of economic science? And what services can this science render us at the present time? Various answers may be given to these and similar questions but under no pretext can they be ignored. Clearly, there is urgent need of presenting to the lay reader a sort of accounting of economics, of examining and weighing with great care the intellectual heritage which has come down to us, and of bringing it to bear upon the burning questions of the present. This also is one of the aims of the book.

While the book is primarily intended to be an introduction to economic science for the intelligent layman, it could also serve as a principal or supplementary text for an introductory college course in economics. To this end, each chapter is followed by notes which pursue certain questions raised in the text beyond the elementary stage and suggest ways of making a more intensive study of them.

I hardly know how to express adequately my thanks to my good friend Professor Patrick M. Boarman who, at the sacrifice of postponing some of his own scientific work, has devoted his great talents both as a scholar and a stylist and accomplished linguist to the translation of the present book. Although English is not my mother tongue I have the impression that he has done a most admirable job.

I owe a particular debt to Professor Glenn Saxon who, both by his sympathy with my ideas and by his constructive criticism of the original text of the present book, has been highly instrumental in bringing about its American edition. I want to use this occasion to express my sincere gratitude to him. I am grateful also to my American publisher for his abiding interest in the English version of this book.

Geneva, 1962

WILHELM RÖPKE