Friedrich List’s “Great Nations”: Mobilising Capital for Quality Labour

This article focuses on List’s analysis of the present Western debt crisis in the historical parallel in the USA after 1815, and List’s criticism of radical free traders. Like mercantilists, Friedrich List argued that trade and payments balances were important warning signals for the success or failure of a national economy and its potential for continued sovereignty and social well-being. List’s remedy for re-establishing a sound balance was to industrialise by elevating labour and civilisation itself. Thus, a nation may progress and thus avoid trade deficits, debt bondage and social misery—and even rise again from such unfortunate circumstances. This is what the USA once did. This is why the USA and the EU can learn from Friedrich List’s solution to America’s debt crisis in the 1820s; mobilising capital for an elevation of labour through targeted production. List argued that the productive sectors must be prioritised and that finance must be controlled in the interest of the nation. He argued that “imperialism” can be used to develop poor countries. At stake, there are also political issues and even geopolitical issues of grand proportions, regarding the relative positions of e.g. the USA, the EU and China and their respective currencies. Perhaps a rearrangement of the international currency system is the only way to remove the constant recurring imbalances and tensions.