In Germany, the classical country of interventionism, the need to deal seriously with an economic critique of inter­ventionism was scarcely felt. Interventionism came to power without a fight. It could ignore the science of eco­nomics created by Englishmen and Frenchmen. Friedrich List denounced it as being injurious to the interests of the German people. Among the few German economists, Thünen was scarcely known, Gossen completely unknown, and Hermann and Mangold without much influence. Men­ger was “eliminated” in the Methodenstreit.

Put on the spot by economic criticism, the representatives of the Historical-Realistic School finally appeal to the “facts.” It cannot be denied, they assert, that all the theoreti­cally unsuitable interventions were actually made, and con­tinue to be made. We cannot believe, they contend, that economic practice did not notice this alleged unsuitabil­ity. But interventionist norms survived for hundreds of years, and since the decline of liberalism, the world is ruled again by interventionism.

To prescientific thinkers, a human society built on private property in the means of production seemed to be naturally chaotic. It received its order, so they thought, only from im­posed precepts of morality and law. Society can exist only if buyer and seller observe justice and fairness. Government must intervene in order to avoid the evil that flows from an arbitrary deviation from the “just price.” This opinion pre­vailed in all remarks on social life until the eighteenth century. It appeared for the last time in all its naiveté in the writings of the mercantilists.

The history of the last decades can be understood only with a comprehension of the consequences of such inter­vention in the economic operations of the private property order. Since the demise of classical liberalism, intervention­ism has been the gist of politics in all countries in Europe and America.

Price intervention aims at setting goods prices that differ from those the unhampered market would set.

Laboratory experiments and observation of external phenomena enable the natural sciences to proceed with measurement and the quantification of knowledge. Referring to this fact, one used to style these sciences as the exact sciences and to belittle the lack of exactitude in the sciences of human action.

Economics need not say much about the immediate effect of production restrictions. Government or any organization of coercion can at first achieve what it sets out to achieve through intervention. But whether it can achieve the re­moter objectives sought indirectly by the intervention is a different question. And it must further be determined whether the result is worth the cost, that is, whether the in­tervening authority would embark upon the intervention if it were fully aware of the costs.