Ch. 21 Listening to the Past: Friedrich List, "National System of Political Economy"

Friedrich List was a German journalist and thinker who wrote about how the government played a larger role in industry in continental Europe than in England. He was a strong supporter of the growth of industry as he believed that industry and manufacturing were a great way to increase the overall well-being of people and increasing the overall wealth of a country. He believed that the "backward" and "advancing" countries as he called them were starting to separate from each other faster and faster, and the longer a country was "backward"  the more dangerous it would be for it as a whole. A backward country would be poor and weak as it based its economy off agriculture and not off industry. He disagreed with the system of economic liberalism set forth by Adam Smith,and believed that Germany would be better off with a system that supported manufacturing. In his most famous work, National System of Political Economy, List argued for the creation of a customs union, which he called the Zollverein, between the German States to boost the economy and promote industrialization.

Excerpt from National System of Political Economy

"The practical importance of the great question of free trade between nations is generally felt in our day, as also the necessity of investigating, with impartiality, once for all, how far theory and practice have erred on this subject, and how far any reconciliation between them is possible. It is at least needful to discuss seriously the problem of such a reconciliation. 

It is not indeed with any assumed modesty, it is with the feeling of a profound mistrust of his power, that the author ventures upon this attempt; it is after resisting many years his inclination, after having hundreds of times questioned the correctness of opinions and again and again verifying them; after having frequently examined opposing opinions, and ascertained, beyond a doubt, their inaccuracy, that he determined to enter upon the solution of this problem. He believes himself free from the empty ambition of contradicting old authorities and propounding new theories. If the author had been an Englishman, he would probably never have entertained doubts of the fundamental principle of Adam Smith's theory. It was the condition of his own country which begot in him, more than twenty years since, the first doubts of the infallibility of that theory; it was the condition of his country which, since that time, determined him to develop, first in anonymous articles, then in more elaborate treatises, not anonymous, contrary opinions. At this moment, the interests of Germany alone give him the courage to publish the present work; he will however not dissemble, that a personal motive is connected with those interests; that is, the necessity in which he is placed of showing by a treatise of some extent, that he is not quite incompetent to treat of political economy.... 

The civilization, political education and power of nations, depend chiefly on their economical condition and reciprocally; the more advanced their economy, the more civilized and powerful will be the nation, the more rapidly will its civilization and power increase, and the more will its economical culture be developed....