Albert Schäffle

Albert Eberhard Friedrich Schäffle (24 February 183125 December 1903) was a German sociologist, political economist, and newspaper editor.

Biography

Early years

Albert Schäffle was born at Nürtingen in Württemberg on 24 February 1831. In 1848 he became a student at the University of Tübingen.

Career

He had studied for the ministry, but started out in journalism as his career. From 1850 to 1860 he was attached to the editorial staff of the Schwäbische Merkur in Stuttgart, and in the latter year accepted a call to the chair of political economy at the University of Tübingen. Schäffle attempted to show a unity between human social behavior and the biological processes observed by natural science, while retaining a spiritual aspect in the tradition of German idealist philosophy.

In a second edition of this work, published in two volumes in 1896, Schäffle emphasized the state-interventionist implications of his work, describing the economy of the "rational social state" in fine detail.

In his Quintessence of Socialism (1875) and The Impossibility of Social Democracy (1885), Schäffle developed a critique of socialism which focused on the problem of incentives in large-scale collectives. His conclusion was that classical socialism and democracy were incompatible. Schäffle thus foreshadowed some of the criticisms of socialism by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

From 1892 to 1901 Schäffle was the sole editor of the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft.

Death and legacy

Albert Schäffle died at Stuttgart on 25 December 1903.

Works

Die nationalökonomische Theorie der ausschließenden Absatzverhältnisse (1867) Kapitalismus und Sozialismus (1870) Das gesellschaftliche System der menschlichen Wirtschaft (1873; 2 Bände) Die Quintessenz des Sozialismus (1874) Digitalisat auf archive.org (PDF; 14 MB) "The Quintessence of Socialism" (translated to English by B. Bosanquet) 1890. Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (1875–78; 4 Bände) Encyklopädie der Staatslehre (1878) Grundsätze der Steuerpolitik (1880) Gesammelte Aufsätze (1885–87; 2 Bände) Zum Kartellwesen und zur Kartellpolitik, in: Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 54 (1898), S. 467-528. Aus meinem Leben (1905) Abriss der Soziologie (1906)