List’s criticism of short-sightedness and the beggar-thy-neighbour policy
List’s criticism of the one-eyed exchange value approach (‘monetarism’) of Smith’s followers (List, 1841, pp. 133ff.) did not prevent him from using relative prices as a part of his own analysis of economics.
Nevertheless, it might be argued that he saw this in a wider perspective. List’s criticism was generally directed against the inclination to short-term evaluations and the related narrow-mindedness in economic affairs. His criticism had four specific targets: (1) landed interests (particularly England), (2) merchant interests (particularly Holland and Britain), (3) governmental regulation (in general, both the lack of it and its excesses) and (4) international politics (particularly England).5In all these cases, List pointed out the international aspect of the problems. In addition, in all these cases, he insisted in a Socratic manner that the actors who were his targets did not have a sufficient understanding of their own interests and how these could benefit from contributing to the interests of other actors. They therefore acted contrary to their own interests. His suggestion for remedying this was in part through legal and regulatory arrangements as well as education and moral enlightenment.
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