Note 617 — Chapter IV · : FRIEDRICH LIST AND THE NATIONAL SYSTEM OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

It is very remarkable that List’s greatest admirer, Dühring, in his Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus (2nd ed., p. 362), insists on the fact that Protection is not an essential element, but a mere temporary form of the principle of national economic solidarity, which is List’s fundamental conception, and which must survive all forms of Protection. Dühring is the only real successor of List and Carey. He has developed their ideas with a great deal of ability and has shown himself a really scientific thinker. But what he chiefly admires in both writers is not their Protection, but their effort to lay hold of the material and moral forces which lie below the mere fact of exchange, and upon which a nation’s prosperity really depends. His Kursus der National- und Sozial-oekonomie (Berlin, 1873) is very interesting reading.