Rudolf Goldscheid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rudolf Goldscheid (12 August 1870 – 6 October 1931) was an Austrian writer and sociologist, co-founder of the German Sociological Association, known for his theory of the human economy (German: Menschenökonomie) and for introducing the field of fiscal sociology.[1] He has been described as "the founder of scientific sociology in Vienna",[2] though he never held a position at a university.[3]

Life[]

Rudolf Goldscheid was born in Vienna on 12 August 1870 as the fifth child of a Jewish family of merchants. After graduating from a Viennese secondary school, in 1891 he enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin to study philosophy and sociology, but dropped out without a degree in 1894. He remained in Germany for some years, writing novels and plays under the pseudonym Rudolf Golm, and married Marie Rudolph in Leipzig in 1898, returning to Vienna soon afterwards. Politically, Goldscheid was a pacifist and social democrat, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and contributor to the socialist newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung. He was a supporter of philosophical monism, and his scepticism of traditional religious beliefs led him to abandon Judaism in 1921. He died in Vienna on 6 October 1931. His funeral was attended by the city's socialist mayor Karl Seitz, and the municipal council soon afterwards named a street in his honour.[1]

Theories[]

In opposition to social Darwinism and Malthusianism, Goldscheid's theory of the human economy emphasised the idea of human beings as a form of "organic capital" within a broader "developmental economy". A sound economy would protect and promote the rights and welfare of workers and women: to ignore "the direct and in particular the indirect costs" of phenomena such as lack of education, child labour, and the exhaustion of workers and spread of diseases among the labour force, was to "indulge in a fiction of productivity". Goldscheid adopted a neo-Lamarckian position on human inheritance, arguing that negative environments could lastingly damage human capabilities: what was needed, he argued, was a social environment that would foster human Höherentwicklung, "upward development" or "evolution".[2] Goldscheid's concept of organic capital was a precedent for later theories of human capital.[4]

Goldscheid also developed the idea that a sociology of the state must focus on understanding public finance. His 1917 book Staatssozialismus oder Staatskapitalismus ("State Socialism or State Capitalism") coined the term Finanzsoziologie, fiscal or financial sociology, arguing that the "budget is the skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies".[5][6] Goldscheid's idea of fiscal sociology influenced the economist Joseph Schumpeter's description of the "tax state".[5] Schumpeter and Goldscheid adopted opposing views of the role of public debt, however: after World War I, while Schumpeter argued that Austria needed to work to extinguish its debt burden, Goldscheid drew on the cameralist tradition to support the recapitalisation of the debt, in order to allow the state to take on a more active and entrepreneurial role.[7]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Exner, Gudrun (2004). "Rudolf Goldscheid (1870–1931) and the Economy of Human Beings". Vienna Yearbook of Population Research. 2: 284–288. JSTOR 23025446.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Logan, Cheryl A. (2013). Hormones, Heredity, and Race: Spectacular Failure in Interwar Vienna. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 113–15. ISBN 978-0813559698.
  3. ^ King, John E. (2019). The Alternative Austrian Economics: A Brief History. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. ISBN 978-1788971515. Goldscheid was financially independent, and never held a university position in any discipline.
  4. ^ Lemke, Thomas (2011). Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. Translated by Trump, Eric Frederick. New York and London: New York University Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0814752418.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Swedberg, Richard (1991). "Introduction: The Man and His Work". The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0691042534.
  6. ^ Goldscheid, Rudolf (1917). Staatssozialismus oder Staatskapitalismus. Ein finanzsoziologischer Beitrag zur Lösung des Staatsschulden-Problems [State Socialism or State Capitalism: A Fiscal Sociological Contribution to the Solution of the Problem of Public Debt]. Vienna: Anzengruber Verlag.
  7. ^ Wagner, Richard E. (2007). Fiscal Sociology and the Theory of Public Finance: An Exploratory Essay. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. p. 189. ISBN 978-1847202468.

Further reading[]

Retrieved from ""