by Jeroen Bouterse
In 1919, Otto Neurath was on trial for high treason, for his role in the short-lived Munich soviet republic. One of the witnesses for the defense was the famous scholar Max Weber.
Neurath was a capable scholar with good ideas, a newspaper recorded Weber as saying; but recently he seemed to have somewhat lost his grip on reality.[1] That judgment would refer to Neurath’s economic thinking. In particular, his belief that a planned economy was viable, to an extent that the entire money economy could be abolished. This conviction, the seeds of which were planted by the economic thought of his father, and which was strengthened by his study and experience of war economies during the 1910s, would in fact be lifelong; Neurath would always be thinking of concrete ways to make co-operation and planning a reality.
His position as head of the ‘Central Economic Administration’ of Bavaria (to which, importantly, he had been installed before the communist coup) had given him an opportunity to realize his ambitious and radical ideas for economic “socialization”. In spite of warnings from his friends and his wife, he showed no inclination to let that slip just because he was now working for Bolsheviks. After the case, Weber would tell Neurath in a private letter that for all his good intentions he had lent his service to tyrants, and that his utterly frivolous and irresponsible plans risked discrediting socialism for a century.[2]
Neurath is now most famous not for this radical experiment, but for his role in the Vienna Circle and the unity of science movement. He also shares with Theseus the honor of having a philosophical parable named after him involving the piecemeal reconstruction of a boat. I myself started reading about him because of my hobby horse: perspectives on the distinction between sciences and humanities. This essay will in the end try to fit in his ideas on that with the rest of his thought, but all the other stuff is so interesting that it is hard to focus. Perhaps it is fitting in that regard to recount what historian of antiquity Eduard Meyer said about Neurath’s dissertation on ancient economic thought: very good yes, but rendered less appealing “by unnecessary deviations from the substance matter, by an inability to suppress any little idea”.[3] It happens to the best of us. But back to the main topic. Read more »