Abstract

On the Beginnings of Scientific and Normatively Practiced Social Policy

Although Georg Friedrich Sartorius von Waltershausen, a historian, economist and philosopher from the University of Göttingen was basically in favour of the teachings of Adam Smith, he wrote, as early as 1820, that the principle of ‘laissez faire’ that was advocated by Smith was an inadequate reason to motivate individual citizens to strive to further their own interests, when implemented alone. Johann Heinrich von Thünen (1783 – 1850), an economist and a practicing farmer in Germany, who probably absorbed the ideas of Sartorius during the short time that he spent studying in Göttingen, was one of the first to deal with problems of social policy in 1819. This he did in a series of studies on wages and capital. It is from von Thünen, who dealt intensively with the teachings not only of Adam Smith but also of Immanuel Kant, that the beginnings of scientific reflections as well as practical initiatives by entrepreneurs in the direction of an early empirical and normative ‘Sozial-Ökonomik’, or ‘social economics’, stem. On the basis of precise dates, Thünen was convinced ‘that the costs for a given quantity of work ... would not bring an optimal return and would not be the least expensive where wages were lowest, but rather where workers were well paid and well nourished’.