Zhang Hongliu: Marx's Triple Critique of List's Political Economy
Marx stated in the "Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy": "The debates on free trade and protective tariffs provided the first impulse for my research into economic issues." The representative of the advocacy for protective tariff policy he mentioned was Friedrich List and his National System of Political Economy. This form of political economy once played an active role in the struggle against the enslavement and colonial plunder of developed nations, promoting the development of the national bourgeoisie, and striving for national independence and the growth of national industry; later, it even became a textbook for revolutionary bourgeois-democratic liberation movements, exerting a significant influence in countries such as Hungary and Slovakia. However, Marx critiqued the "vulgar" essence of List’s political economy from three aspects: class position, theoretical assertions, and philosophical foundations.
First, from the perspective of class position, Marx believed that List’s political economy was the theoretical representation of the German bourgeoisie, reflecting its weakness and selfishness. If the British bourgeoisie had gradually created its domestic market through the "concerted effort" [1] of mercantilist economics, and subsequently sought to seize the world market by championing the principles of free trade and free markets, then the German bourgeoisie represented by List’s political economy faced a different situation. On one hand, it needed to draw upon British and French political economy—especially mercantilist doctrines—to establish a domestic market; on the other hand, it had to maintain high vigilance against the powerful expansion of British and French capitalism. Therefore, it is easy to understand why List could not fully accept the cosmopolitan doctrines of classical economics, but instead advocated for rejecting the expansion of such political economy based on "German reality" and demanded the implementation of protective tariff policies in trade. The "fence-sitting" [2] attitude of List’s political economy demonstrated the dual weakness of the German bourgeoisie: on one hand, compared to the advanced capitalist development of Britain and France, the German bourgeoisie was still "limping" behind; on the other hand, while the German proletariat already possessed a clearer class consciousness in theory than the German bourgeoisie, the German bourgeoisie was still attempting to create the necessary foundations for capitalist development. Thus, Marx believed that List’s political economy represented the German "philistines." In this sense, List’s political economy was not an "overtaking economics" [3] but a stale "vulgar economics."
Second, from the perspective of theoretical assertions, Marx also considered List’s political economy to be vulgar. List constructed two primary theories: "stage theory" and the "theory of productive forces." The former elaborated on the stages for backward countries to develop industrial capitalism as a way to counter the universality of cosmopolitan economics; the latter emphasized the necessity of a state policy of protective tariffs to counter the "theory of exchange value." In Marx’s view, while classical economists recognized the spontaneous operation of the law of value and the law of surplus value—preliminarily forming a general concept of "productive labor" and raising the demand for free trade—List, proceeding from the perspective of a national economy and through the construct of the "state," vulgarly synthesized a motley collection of social, technical, economic, and political categories. Such a hodgepodge caused the concept of "production (labor)" to "ultimately lose any scientific value it possessed as a category of political economy." If classical economists represented by Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say regarded capitalism as an eternal and natural social form, List’s political economy acted as a national bourgeois opposition; compared to the British and French industrial capitalists who made no secret of their pursuit of wealth, List created an "idealized" economics for himself that was completely different from secular economics, effectively "beginning the creation of his own wealth by creating an exaggerated, pseudo-idealized national economics." This political economy actually interpreted wealth as a new "spiritualism," reflecting the gap between Germany and Britain/France: in Britain and France, the issue was the rule of society over wealth, whereas in Germany, it was national economics, or "the rule of private property over the nation."
Finally, Marx further critically examined the "historical school of law" [4] premises of List’s political economy. The Historical School of Law held that law was not a product of "reason" but a concentrated expression of the "national spirit" passed down through generations, arising and developing spontaneously with historical progress. The source of law was primarily custom rather than legislation; therefore, the various regulations and laws of a nation possessed their own organic, natural historical life, and the individualizing method of historicism differed from the generalizing method of cognition. Based on these reasons, Gustav Hugo, a representative of the Historical School of Law, criticized the Enlightenment thinkers' understanding of the essence of law and their "legislative" usurpation, viewing his own perspective as a branch of Kantian philosophy and calling himself a student of Kant. In Marx’s view, however, Hugo precisely distorted Kant. While Kant's transcendental philosophy demonstrated that "what is positive is rational," Hugo sought to prove that "what is positive is irrational," and this was "only in order not to regard what is rational as positive." If Kant left a place for the unknowability of the "thing-in-itself," Hugo believed that "because we cannot know what is true, we logically admit the complete validity of what is untrue, provided it exists." Here, Hugo actually acted as a "skeptic" who denied the existence of the essence of things, treating accidental phenomena as the essence. Marx called this the "frank, naive, and reckless method of the historical school," the essence of which was to completely oppose "reason" to "history"—"if this historical school of law is not an invention of German history, then it has invented German history." If Kant’s philosophy was the German theory of the French Revolution, then "Hugo’s natural law should be regarded as the German theory of the French ancien régime."
As stated above, Marx critiqued the "vulgarity" of List’s political economy from the perspectives of class position, theoretical assertions, and philosophical foundations. The "vulgarity" of List’s political economy centrally displayed the complexity of German reality. Marx once called the German nation of that time "the most stupid nation under the sun" and used "anachronism" to describe the "status quo" of Germany itself. In Marx’s view, this "anachronism" was centrally embodied in the severe disconnection between Germany’s "philosophical theory" and its "historical reality": on one hand, German reality was extremely backward, for what had already been concluded in the developed capitalism of Britain and France was only just beginning in Germany; on the other hand, the philosophical theory representing German reality was highly advanced—the German philosophy of right and philosophy of the state, exemplified by Hegelian philosophy, was the only part of German history to remain on par with official contemporary reality. Thus, Marx said: "We are the philosophical contemporaries of the present without being its historical contemporaries." To emerge from this dual disorder, it was necessary to seek a breakthrough in thought and construct an "overtaking scheme." In fact, since the beginning of the modern era, the object for various countries to overtake has been Britain (and later France). However, regarding Britain’s powerful position, different countries adopted different strategies: whether to "follow the trend" with free trade policies, "resist the trend" with trade protectionism, or adopt a strategy of "power against power" in trade wars. If List, proceeding from the position of the German industrial bourgeoisie, resisted "British theory" with "German reality" and proposed a "German solution" compatible with both "following" and "resisting the trend," then the Marx of that time faced a theoretical situation similar to List’s. However, unlike List, Marx proceeded from the position of the proletariat, attempting to realize a dual transcendence of both "German theory" and "German reality" in order to construct a "world solution" that would truly resolve the "German question." The in-depth elucidation of this solution is precisely the research theme of contemporary Marxism, and Marx’s triple critique of List’s political economy serves as an important reference for our research, necessitating a re-examination.