Similarities and Differences in Central Concepts of Social Economy: Adolph Wagner’s State Socialism and Heinrich Pesch’s Solidarism

Adolph Wagner and Heinrich Pesch SJ were each in their own right outstanding persons and remarkable economists. Wagner, the renowned professor of state economics and public finance, inter alia rector of the Friedrich Wilhelm University (later Humboldt University) in Berlin, founder with Gustav von Schmoller of the Verein für Socialpolitik, best known for his four volume work Finanzwissenschaft (“Public Finance”) and his “law of the growing expansion of public or state activities,” was the teacher of Heinrich Pesch. Pesch, the founder of Catholic social theory, established a reputation for original and fundamental social ideas published in many books, first of all in his Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie (“Textbook of Economics”), a five volume exposition of the theoretical foundations of economics in light of the benevolent pragmatism of the Catholic social movement. Pesch took over many ideas from Wagner, including central aspects of the concept of state socialism, and used these in the construction of his own key concept of solidarism. The article compares common features and differences in the central concepts of these two outstanding economists.