Friedrich List

Born Aug. 6, 1789, in Reutlingen; died Nov. 30, 1846, in Kufstein. German economist, representative of the school of vulgar political economics, and spokesman for the interests of the German industrial bourgeoisie.

In 1817, List became professor of government at the University of Tübingen. He was a founder of a general association of German industrialists and merchants. His basic work is The National System of Political Economy (1841), in which political economy as a science was replaced by what he termed national economy, a system of recommendations on economic policy for the emerging German bourgeoisie. He developed the idea of “protectionism for infant industries,” which required the active intervention of the state in economic life, and attempted to develop a theory of productive forces, considering “educational capital” such as scientific discoveries and advances in craftsmanship to be a basic element in these forces and a major source of a nation’s wealth. List defended the chauvinist idea of German hegemony in Europe. He looked upon war as the “blessing of the nation.” Several of List’s ideas were later employed in Nazi geopolitics.