Friedrich List - Legacy

Legacy

List's principal work is entitled Das Nationale System der Politischen Ökonomie (1841) and was translated into English as The National System of Political Economy.

Before 1914, List and Marx were the two best-known German economists and theorists of development.

"This book has been more frequently translated than the works of any other German economist, except Karl Marx."

He is credited with influencing National Socialism in Germany, and his ideas are credited as forming the basis of the European Economic Community.

His influence among developing nations has been considerable. Japan has followed his model. It has also been argued that Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao policies were inspired by List.

In Ireland he influenced Arthur Griffith of Sinn Féin and these theories were used by the Fianna Fáil government in the 1930s to instigate protectionism with a view to developing Irish industry.

As Marx was not interested in the survival of the capitalist system, he was not really concerned with economic policy, except in so far as the labour movement was involved. There, his argument was concentrated on measures to limit the length of the working day, and to strengthen trade union bargaining power. His analysis was also largely confined to the situation in the leading capitalist country of his day—the UK—and he did not consider the policy problems of other Western countries in catching up with the lead country (as Friedrich List did). In so far as Marx was concerned with other countries, it was mainly with poor countries which were victims of Western imperialism in the merchant capitalist era.

Heterodox economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang and Erik Reinert, refer to List often explicitly when writing about suitable economic policies for developing countries.