Marx’s Triple Critique of List’s Political Economy

In the preface to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*, Marx wrote: “The debate on free trade and protective tariffs was the first motive that drove me to study economic questions.” [1]1 Karl Marx, “Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 29 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987), p. 263. The representative of the tariff-protection doctrine he referred to was List and his national economics. This kind of political economy once played a positive role in the struggle against the enslavement and colonial plunder of developed countries, in promoting the development of the national bourgeoisie, and in striving for national independence and the development of national industry. It later even became a textbook for the revolutionary bourgeois democratic liberation movement, exerting significant influence in countries such as Hungary and Slovakia. [2]2 Friedrich List’s ideas influenced economic nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, including in Hungary and Slovakia, where they were used to argue for protective tariffs and industrial development against Austrian and other foreign domination. However, Marx criticized the “vulgar” essence of List’s political economy from three aspects: class standpoint, theoretical propositions, and philosophical foundations.

马克思在《〈政治经济学批判〉序言》中说：“关于自由贸易与保护关税的辩论，是促使我去研究经济问题的最初动因。”他所提及的主张关税保护政策的代表就是李斯特及其国家经济学。这种政治经济学在反对发达国家的奴役与殖民掠夺、促进民族资产阶级的发展、争取国家独立与民族工业发展的斗争中曾经发挥了积极作用，后来甚至还成为革命的资产阶级民主解放运动的教科书，曾经在匈牙利、斯洛伐克等国家产生了重大影响。但马克思从阶级立场、理论主张与哲学根据三个方面批判了李斯特政治经济学的“庸俗性”实质。

First, from the perspective of class standpoint, Marx believed that List’s political economy was the theoretical representation of the German bourgeoisie, reflecting its weakness and selfishness. If the British bourgeoisie, through the “cooperation” of mercantilist economics, had gradually created its domestic market and then, by extolling the principles of free trade and the free market, sought to seize the world market, then the German bourgeoisie represented by List’s political economy, on the one hand, needed to draw on the political economy of the British and French bourgeoisie, especially mercantilist doctrine, to establish a domestic market; but on the other hand, it had to remain highly vigilant against the aggressive expansion of British and French capitalism. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why he could not fully accept the cosmopolitan doctrine of classical economics, but instead advocated rejecting the expansion of this political economy with “German reality” and demanded the implementation of protective tariffs in trade policy. The “fence-sitting” attitude of List’s political economy reveals the dual weakness of the German bourgeoisie: on the one hand, compared with the advanced capitalist development of Britain and France, the German bourgeoisie was still “limping along” behind them; on the other hand, when the German proletariat already had a clearer class consciousness in theory than the German bourgeoisie, the German bourgeoisie was still trying to create the necessary foundations for the development of capitalism. Therefore, Marx believed that List’s political economy represented the German “philistine.” [3]3 Marx uses the term “philistine” (German: *Spießbürger*) to denote a narrow-minded, self-interested member of the petty bourgeoisie, lacking revolutionary ambition. In this sense, List’s political economy was not a “catch-up economics” but a stale “vulgar economics.”

首先，从阶级立场看，马克思认为，李斯特的政治经济学是德国资产阶级的理论表征，反映的是德国资产阶级的软弱与自私。如果说英国资产阶级通过重商主义经济学的“协力”已经逐渐造就了它的国内市场，进而通过高扬自由贸易与自由市场的原则以夺取世界市场，那么，李斯特政治经济学所代表的德国资产阶级，一方面需要借助英法资产阶级政治经济学，特别是重商主义学说，以建立国内市场；但另一方面又不得不对英法资本主义的强势扩张保持高度的警惕。因此，不难理解他何以不能完全接受古典经济学的世界主义学说，而是主张以“德国的实际”拒斥这种政治经济学的扩张并要求在贸易政策上实行保护关税政策。李斯特政治经济学的“骑墙”态度表明了德国资产阶级的双重软弱：一方面，与英国法国先进的资本主义发展相比，德国资产阶级还跟在后面“一瘸一拐”；另一方面，当德国的无产阶级比德国资产阶级在理论上已经有了更为明确的阶级意识时，德国的资产阶级却还试图为资本主义的发展创造必要的基础。因此，马克思认为，李斯特政治经济学代表的是德国的“庸人”。从这个意义上说，李斯特政治经济学不是一种“赶超经济学”，而是一种陈腐的“庸俗经济学”。

Second, from the perspective of theoretical propositions, Marx believed that List’s political economy was also vulgar. List constructed two main theories: the “theory of stages” and the “theory of productive forces.” The former expounded the stages of development of industrial capitalism in backward countries, thereby opposing the universality of cosmopolitan economics; the latter emphasized the necessity of the state’s tariff-protection policy, thereby opposing the “theory of exchange value.” In Marx’s view, if classical economists recognized the spontaneous operation of the law of value and the law of surplus value, initially formed a general concept of “productive labor,” and put forward the demand for free trade, then List, from the perspective of national economy and through the construction of the concept of the “state,” vulgarly lumped together a motley collection of social, technical, economic, and political categories. But such a hodgepodge ultimately caused the concept of “production (labor)” to “lose all scientific value as a category of political economy.” [4]4 Karl Marx, “On Friedrich List’s Book *Das nationale System der politischen Oekonomie*,” in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 40 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983), p. 277. If classical economists like Smith and Say regarded capitalism as an eternal and natural social form, List’s political economy played the role of a national bourgeois opposition; compared with the British and French industrial capitalists who made no secret of their pursuit of wealth, List created for himself an “idealized” economics completely different from secular economics, which was in fact “beginning to create his own wealth by creating an exaggerated, falsely idealized national economics.” [5]5 Ibid., p. 275. This kind of political economy actually interpreted wealth as a new “spiritualism,” reflecting the disparity between Germany and Britain and France: in Britain and France, the problem was the domination of society over wealth, while in Germany, the problem was the domination of national economics or “private property over the nation.”

其次，从理论主张看，马克思认为李斯特的政治经济学也是庸俗的。李斯特构造了两个主要理论，即“阶段论”与“生产力论”，前者阐述了落后国家发展工业资本主义的几个阶段，以此对抗世界主义经济学的普遍性；后者则是强调国家之关税保护政策的必要性，以此对抗“交换价值理论”。在马克思看来，如果说古典经济学家认识到了价值法则与剩余价值法则的自发作用，初步形成了一般意义上的“生产劳动”的概念并提出了自由贸易的要求，那么李斯特则是从民族经济的角度，通过“国家”这个概念的构造，将五花八门的社会的与技术的、经济的、政治的范畴庸俗地归纳在一起。但这样的大杂烩使得“生产（劳动）”这个概念“最终失去了作为政治经济学一个范畴所具有的任何科学价值”。如果说以斯密、萨伊为代表的古典经济学家将资本主义视为永恒的、自然的社会形式，李斯特的政治经济学则充当了一个民族资产阶级反对派的角色；相对于英法工业资本家毫不掩饰自己对财富的追求，李斯特为自己创造了一种与世俗的经济学完全不同的“理想化”的经济学，实际上是“以创造一种夸大的、假理想化的国民经济学开始创造自己的财富的”。这种政治经济学其实是把财富当作新的“唯灵论”来解释，反映了德国与英法两国的落差：在英法两国的问题是社会对财富的统治，而在德国的问题是国民经济学或“私有财产对国民的统治”。

Finally, Marx further critically examined the “historical jurisprudence” premise of List’s political economy. The “Historical School of Law” [6]6 The Historical School of Law was a 19th-century German legal movement, led by figures such as Gustav Hugo and Friedrich Carl von Savigny, which argued that law evolves organically from national custom and history, not from abstract reason or legislation. held that law was not a product of “reason” but a concentrated expression of the “national spirit” handed down from generation to generation, arising and developing spontaneously with the course of history; the source of law was primarily custom rather than legislation, so a nation’s various codes and laws had their organic, natural historical life, and the historicist method of individualization also differed from the generalizing method of cognition. Based on these reasons, the representative figure of the Historical School of Law, Hugo, criticized the Enlightenment thinkers’ understanding of the essence of law and the “usurpation” of legislation, regarded his own views as a branch of Kantian philosophy, and even called himself a student of Kant. [7]7 Gustav Hugo (1764–1844) was a German jurist and a founder of the Historical School of Law. He claimed his work was a development of Kant’s critical philosophy. But in Marx’s view, Hugo precisely distorted Kant. If Kant’s transcendental philosophy demonstrated that “the positive is rational,” Hugo sought to prove that “the positive is irrational,” and that he “only does so in order not to regard the rational as positive”; if Kant left a place for the unknowability of the “thing-in-itself,” Hugo believed that “because we cannot know the true thing, as long as the untrue thing exists, we logically acknowledge it as fully valid.” [8]8 Karl Marx, “The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law,” in *Marx and Engels Collected Works*, vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 203. Marx is paraphrasing and criticizing Hugo’s position. Here, Hugo actually acted as a “skeptic” who denied the existence of the essence of things, taking the accidental phenomena of things as essence. Marx called this “the frank, naive, and unscrupulous method of the historical school,” whose essence was to completely oppose “reason” to “history”: “If this historical school of law is not a fabrication of German history, then it has fabricated German history.” [9]9 Ibid., p. 204. 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*.” [10]10 Ibid., p. 205. The French *ancien régime* refers to the pre-Revolutionary monarchy and social order.

最后，马克思进一步批判性地考察了李斯特政治经济学的“历史法学”前提。“历史法学派”认为，法律并不是“理性”的产物，而是世代相传的“民族精神”的集中体现，并随着历史的发展而自发地产生和发展起来的；法律的渊源首先是习惯而不是立法，因此，一个民族的各种法规、法律具有其有机的、自然的历史生命，历史主义的个别化方法也不同于一般化的认识方法。基于上述理由，历史法学派的代表人物胡果批判了启蒙主义者对法的本质的理解与“立法”的僭越，并将自己的观点视为康德哲学的支脉，还自称康德的学生。但在马克思看来，胡果恰恰是曲解了康德。如果说康德的先验哲学论证了“实证的事物是合乎理性的”，但胡果却力图证明“实证的事物是不合理性的”，其“只是为了不把合乎理性的事物看作实证的事物”；如果说康德为“物自体”的不可知留下了一席之地，胡果却认为，“因为我们不能认识真实的事物，所以只要不真实的事物存在着，我们就合乎逻辑地承认它完全有效”。胡果在这里实际上是作为一个否定事物本质存在的“怀疑主义者”，将事物的偶然现象当作了本质。马克思称之为“历史学派的坦率而天真的、无所顾忌的方法”，其实质是将“理性”与“历史”完全对立起来了，“这个历史法学派如果不是德国历史的杜撰，那就是它杜撰了德国历史”。如果说康德的哲学是法国革命的德国理论，那么，“就应当把胡果的自然法看成是法国旧制度的德国理论”。

As discussed above, Marx criticized the “vulgarity” of List’s political economy from three aspects: class standpoint, theoretical propositions, and philosophical basis. The “vulgarity” of List’s political economy centrally reveals the complexity of German reality. Marx once called the German nation of that time “the most stupid nation under heaven” and used “anachronism” to describe Germany’s “present state itself.” In Marx’s view, this “anachronism” was concentrated in the high degree of disconnection between Germany’s “philosophical theory” and Germany’s “historical reality”: on the one hand, Germany’s reality was extremely backward, because things that had already been completed in the developed capitalism of England and France were only just beginning in Germany; on the other hand, the philosophical theory expressing Germany’s reality was highly developed, with German legal philosophy and state philosophy, exemplified by Hegel’s philosophy, being the only German history that remained on the same level as the formal contemporary reality. Therefore, Marx said: “We are the philosophical contemporaries of the present age, but not its historical contemporaries.” To escape this double anachronism, it was necessary to seek a breakthrough in thought and construct some kind of “catch-up plan.” In fact, since modern times, the object that various countries have sought to catch up with has been England (and later France). But in the face of England’s dominant position, different countries have adopted different strategies: whether to adopt a “go with the flow” free-trade policy, a “go against the flow” trade-protection policy, or a “use power to resist power” trade-war strategy. If List, from the standpoint of the German industrial bourgeoisie, resisted “English theory” with “German practice” and proposed a “German plan” that accommodated both “going with the flow” and “going against the flow,” then Marx at that time faced a theoretical situation similar to List’s. But unlike List, Marx, from the standpoint of the proletariat, sought to achieve a dual transcendence of “German theory” and “German practice” in order to construct a “world plan” that truly solved the “German question.” An in-depth elaboration of this plan is precisely the research theme of contemporary Marxism, and Marx’s triple critique of List’s political economy is an important reference for our research, hence the necessity of re-examining it.

如上所述，马克思从阶级立场、理论主张与哲学根据三个方面批判了李斯特政治经济学的“庸俗性”。李斯特政治经济学的“庸俗性”集中显示了德国现实的复杂性。马克思曾经称当时的德意志民族为“天下最愚蠢的民族”，并以“时代错乱”来表述德国的“现状本身”。在马克思看来，这种“时代错乱”集中体现在德国的“哲学理论”与德国的“历史现实”之间高度脱节：一方面，德国的现实是极端落后的，因为在英法的发达资本主义已经完结的事物，在德国才刚刚开始；另一方面，表述德国现实的哲学理论却是高度发达的，以黑格尔哲学为典范的德国的法哲学和国家哲学是唯一与正式的当代现实保持在同等水平上的德国历史。所以，马克思才说：“我们是当代的哲学同时代人，而不是当代的历史同时代人。”要走出这种双重错乱就必须寻求思想的突破，构建某种“赶超方案”。事实上，近代以来各国所赶超的对象就是英国（后来包括法国）。但针对英国的强势地位，到底是采取“顺势而为”的自由贸易政策还是“逆势而为”的贸易保护政策，或者“以势抗势”的贸易大战策略，各个国家采取了不同的战略。如果说李斯特从德国工业资产阶级的立场出发，以“德国的实际”抵抗“英国的理论”，提出了一种兼容“顺势”与“逆势”的“德国方案”，那么，当时的马克思也面临着与李斯特类似的理论境遇。但与李斯特不同，马克思是从无产阶级的立场出发，试图实现对“德国的理论”与“德国的实际”的双重超越，以构造一种真正解决“德国问题”的“世界方案”。对这种方案的深入阐释正是当代马克思主义的研究主题，而马克思对李斯特政治经济学的三重批判就是我们研究的重要参照，因而有重新考察的必要。

(The author is an associate professor at the School of Marxism, Tianjin Chengjian University)

（作者系天津城建大学马克思主义学院副教授）