Adolph Wagner
Adolph Wagner (25 March 1835 – 8 November 1917) was a German economist and politician, a leading Kathedersozialist (academic socialist) and public finance scholar and advocate of agrarianism. Wagner's law of increasing state activity is named after him.
This article is about the German economist. For the Nazi official, see Adolf Wagner. For the German weightlifter, see Adolf Wagner (weightlifter).
Adolph Wagner
Work[edit]
Wagner is the main protagonist of a specific school of economics and social policy, called "State Socialism" ("Staatssozialismus"), which is a specific form of Kathedersozialismus.[2] (Albert Schäffle (1831–1903), Lujo Brentano (1844–1931), Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917) and Karl Rodbertus(-Jagetzow) (1805–1875) were important protagonists of that thought as well.) He was a member of the Historical school of economics, as his general review essay on Marshall's Principles of Economics so clearly demonstrates. However, he did fundamentally differentiate himself from what he called the 'younger' and more 'extreme' members of the German historical school such as Gustav von Schmoller who, according to Wagner, tended to dismiss too hastily what the latter terms the more deductive work of English writers (in short, those in the tradition of classical economics, including the famous contemporary Cambridge University Professor Alfred Marshall whose book he was reviewing).
Character[edit]
Wagner had a very combative and harsh personality.
He did not take insults lightly and never phrased things diplomatically. He had difficulties with Schmoller and was an enemy of Lujo Brentano – and these two were about his closest colleagues.
By all contemporary accounts, it is probably fair to say that Wagner was vain, easily hurt and extremely choleric.
In the 1890s, Wagner would so enrage an industrial-conservative member of the Reichstag, likewise with a defense of the Kathedersozialist influence within the University, that the deputy challenged him to a duel. (Wagner did not categorically refuse, but it was never fought.)
An even more famous case was Wagner’s altercation with Eugen Dühring (against whom Friedrich Engels' Anti-Dühring is directed), and which in the very end resulted in Dühring's remotion and dismissal from the University of Berlin.
Life[edit]
Together with Gustav von Schmoller, Wagner belongs to the most important economists of the Bismarck period. He was a member of the Verein für Socialpolitik (Society for Social Policy).
Wagner formulated the Law of Increasing State Spending, also known as "Wagner's Law."
His works set the stage for the development of the monetary and credit systems in Germany and substantially influenced the central bank policy and financial practice before World War I.