Chapter Nineteen - Cameralism, Physiocracy and Antiphysiocracy in the Germanies

Summary

Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer's 1780 book, Der AntiPhysiocrat, was the manifesto of German Antiphysiocracy. The movement it represented had a relatively short lifespan, lasting about two decades, from around 1770 until the outbreak of the French Revolution. Johann Jacob Moser's Anti-Mirabeau, the most important early work of German Antiphysiocracy, appeared in 1771, followed by dozens of Antiphysiocractic books and treatises. Germany became, at this time, the epicenter of Antiphysiocracy in Europe.

The controversy was raging in 1782, when Count von Dietrichstein, a patron of the Austrian cameralist Joseph von Sonnenfels, hosted a gathering to defend the Antiphysiocratic cause. An edition of Christian Wilhelm Dohm's essay, Ueber das physiokratische Sistem, had been specially printed and distributed for the occasion. Sonnenfels, who wrote a short preface to the essay, observed that “Physiocratic und Antiphysiocratic pens are busy”; he caught the mood in and around Vienna nicely, playing with old cameralist themes of fashion and luxury.

Germany is forever condemned to imitate France, not only in the cut of the dress, the girth of the crinoline, the height of the curls, but even in politics! Amazing! The train of fashion arrives like a traveler, carrying some novelty across our borders long after it has outlived its welcome at home, long after it has become outmoded in France.

It was the perfect cameralist riposte to the critiques of German Physiocrats. Foremost among these was Johann August Schlettwein's treatise, Die wichtigste Angelegenheit für das ganze Publicum. Sonnenfels, Professor of Police und Cameral Sciences in Vienna since 1763, had quite literally written the book—Grundsätze der Polizey, Handlung und Finanzwissenschaft—for generations of Austrian cameralists; and he had long labored to encourage Austrian exports and discourage French imports with the right mix of duties, taxes and regulations. In the preface to Dohm's essay, he suggested that the same approach should be taken with Physiocracy, another costly and dangerous French import.

Dohm's Antiphysiocratic treatise, to which Sonnenfels had penned the preface, echoed many of the same themes that Pfeiffer and Moser had already sounded before him. There was, by this time, a distinctive discourse of Antiphysiocracy. Antiphysiocrats attacked Physiocracy for being too indirect, too abstract, too allegorical and, above all, too metaphysical.