On Commerce and Usury (1524)

Martin Luther

Description

A revised translation of Martin Luther’s most important economic pamphlet with extended critical introduction and notes

This volume presents Martin Luther’s contribution to the modern economic sciences, providing a detailed  introduction and revised translation of his major pamphlet on economic matters, ‘On Commerce and Usury’ (‘Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher’, 1524). In his teachings on indulgences, Luther picked up on the question of hoarding money, and was among the earliest voices in early modern Europe calling for an ‘ethical’ economics. Luther‘s work prefigured many later contributions to modern economic theory, from the mercantilists and cameralists to the German Historical School.

Acknowledgements; CRITICAL INTRODUCTION: 1. Approaching Luther; 2. Contextualizing Luther: The Powers of Time and Space; 3. Luther: Impulsive Economics; 4. The Grip of the Dead Hand: Crisis Economics for a Pre-Industrial Society? 5. Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher (1524): Analytical Summary; 6. Conclusion: What Can We Learn from Luther Today?; ON COMMERCE AND USURY (1524): Notes on the Text; On Commerce and Usury; Bibliography; Index

Sujets

• Economic development
• Economic growth
• Economic history
• Development

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781783084432
• Langue: English

Extrait

On Commerce and Usury (1524)

On Commerce and Usury (1524)
Martin Luther
Edited with Introduction and Notes by Philipp Robinson Rössner
Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.Anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2015 by ANTHEM PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© 2015 Philipp Robinson Rössner editorial matter and selection.
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Luther, Martin, 1483-1546. On commerce and usury (1524) : Martin Luther / edited with Introduction and Notes by Philipp Robinson Rössner. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78308-385-5 (hard back) 1. Luther, Martin, 1483-1546. 2. Commerce. 3. Usury. 4. Economics. I. Rössner, Philipp Robinson, editor. II. Luther, Martin, 1483-1546. III. Title. BR334. 3. L88 2015 261. 8’5–dc23 2015015238
ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 385 5 (Hbk) ISBN-10: 1 78308 385 9 (Hbk)
Cover Image: Martin Luther (1546), after Lucas Cranach, presumably Lucas Cranach the Younger. © Stadtmuseum Erfurt “Haus zum Stockfisch” 2014
This title is also available as an ebook.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
1. Approaching Luther
2. Contextualizing Luther: The Powers of Time and Space
3. Luther: Impulsive Economics
4. The Grip of the Dead Hand: Crisis Economics for a Pre-Industrial Society?
5. Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher (1524): Analytical Summary
6. Conclusion: What Can We Learn from Luther Today?
ON COMMERCE AND USURY (1524)
Notes on the Text
On Commerce and Usury
Part I. On Commerce
Part II. On Usury ( Great Sermon on Usury , 1520)
Part III. Addendum to the Great Sermon on Usury (1524)
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It was Erik Reinert who suggested that I should produce a commented new translation of Luther’s On Commerce and Usury / Von Kauffshandlung und Wucher (1524) – for which I am immensely grateful because I believe I have learnt a lot more about Luther from this exercise than I had before, when I had studied the monetary economics of the early Reformation in Germany. Contrary to most mainstream accounts in history, theology, church history and economics, I have taken the freedom to interpret Luther as someone who contributed to modern economics and political economy. This is something which most mainstream accounts would probably reject, but as will be shown in the book, there are quite enough cognitive distortions in modern economic theory – which has also considerably influenced historians’ interpretations – to suggest that some overhaul of the modern or neoclassical paradigm would be in order. This book can be only a very modest contribution to the debate, but from a somewhat unexpected vantage point, and the viewpoint of a historian.
Surely the volume will contain a few mistakes; these will have to be booked to the author’s account. The following people have contributed a fair share towards its improvement. I should like to thank above all Erik Reinert and his wife Fernanda, as well as my colleague Chris Close at St John’s University (USA) who all read the entire manuscript and provided most generous comments and feedback. Erik proved absolutely inspirational along the way; his knowledge of history and ancient (or heterodox) economic theory is unsurpassed. I am also grateful to Prasannan Parthasarathi and Francesco Boldizzoni, as well as two anonymous referees who read the manuscript and pointed towards areas of improvement. My colleagues and friends – too numerous to list – at Manchester and Leipzig commented upon several aspects to be found within this work. Special thanks are also due to the editorial staff of Anthem, in particular Brian Stone, as well as my research assistants Stefan Lehm and Juana Schubert, who produced an index, procured and processed book orders and bibliographical tasks and took care of the copyright issues relating to the pictures and images reproduced in the book.
I should like to thank the following people and institutions for granting permission to use images under copyright: Peter Schmelzle (Wimpfen) for the altarpiece of Wimpfen town church ( chapter 1 ), Dieter Knoblauch at Annaberg-Buchholz for the Annaberg altarpiece images ( chapter 2 ), the Sächsische Landesbibliothek/Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB) for the Saiger hearth ( chapter 2 ), as well as the Stadtmuseum Erfurt ‘Haus zum Stockfisch’ for the 1546 Luther image by (or after) Cranach (title page) and, finally, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek for the frontispiece of the 1524 edition of Kauffshandlung und Wucher .
And at last, my special acknowledgements and love go to my family, Britta, Ailidh and Marit.
Leipzig, December 2014
Philipp Robinson Rössner
Chapter 1
APPROACHING LUTHER
Noch vor dreissig Jahren erfuhr es keinen Widerspruch, als Johann Baptist Say den Werth einer Geschichte der politischen Oekonomie mit den Worten läugnete: ‘Sie ist weiter nichts, als die Darstellung der mehr oder minder gelungenen, zu verschiedenen Zeiten und an verschiedenen Orten wiederholten Versuche, die Wahrheiten, woraus sie besteht, zu sammeln und festzustellen. Was würde es uns helfen, abgeschmackte Meinungen und mit Recht verrufene Lehren zusammen zu tragen? Dieselben zu Tage zu fördern, wäre ebenso unnütz als langweilig’. Dieser Ausspruch war die einfache Folge der damaligen Ansicht von der absoluten Wahrheit der neueren national-ökonomischen Theorie, welche man, losgerissen von allem geschichtlichen Boden, von allen Bedingungen des Raums, der Zeit und der Nationalität, als eine rein aus den Principien des Verstandes gefolgerte Summe von Wahrheiten betrachtete, deren Verständniss allen früheren Geschlechtern verschlossen, die aber einmal aufgestellt und entwickelt, für alle Zeiten und Völker wahr und in sich geschlossen sein sollten.
Die Reformation des 16. Jahrhunderts musste vorhergehen, ehe im 18. und 19ten die Dampfmaschine erfunden werden und die National-Oekonomie als selbstständige Wissenschaft erfasst werden konnte. Nicht nur für Kant und Hegel, auch für Adam Smith und die grossen Geister im Gebiete der technischen Erfindungen bildet – so paradox es klingen mag – die nothwendige Voraussetzung die deutsche Reformation.
[As recently as 30 years ago, no one would have objected when John Baptist Say denied a history of political economy its relevance by saying that it was ‘nothing more than a compilation with mixed success of past attempts during various times and locations at finding and collecting the eternal economic truths. What help would it be to collect old vulgar and tasteless opinions and theories that had rightly been refuted? Tracing them would be as useless as it would be boring’. This uttering was the expression of a simple consequence of the prevailing idea that current economic theory would have universal currency as an inherent truth, detached from its historical context and conditions of space, time and nationality; a sum of truths and laws derived purely from principles of reason, from which our ancestors had been precluded but which – once they had been discovered and fully developed – would attain universal truth for all times and peoples as a closed theory.
The sixteenth-century Reformation had to precede the steam engine of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and the development of economics as a separate science. In fact, the German Reformation is the intellectual and necessary predecessor not only for Hegel and Kant but – paradoxically as it may sound – for Adam Smith and all the great inventive geniuses of the mechanical age also.]
– Gustav (von) Schmoller, ‘Zur Geschichte der national-ökonomischen Ansichten in Deutschland während der Reformations-Periode’, Zeitschrift für Gesamte Staatswissenschaft , 16 (1860), 461–716 (461 and 716).
I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour […] We shall once more value ends before means and prefer the good to the useful.
John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren , 371–72
Do Markets Need Rules? The Idea and Plan of the Book
A recent blockbuster (2012) on markets and morality found that ‘in recent decades, markets and market thinking have reached into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. More and more we are putting a price on noneconomic goods’. 1 Almost exactly five hundred years ago, things were not so different. Luther’s teaching on indulgences publicized by the 95 Theses in 1517 developed into a religious programme that subsequently attained its own inner life generating some long-lasting dynamics, not only in the religious but also in the cultur