They are very much to the point in the sense that anyone who argues that national-capitalist development (with colonies, no less) is prototypical of a conquest-and-exploit motif, aka Nazism. But that does not stop the fact that List does not "fit" entirely into this model. I think the "pro-List" writers (I'm not certain they're pro-List so much as not so much anti) would tend to see in List a rather unexceptional advocate of economic nationalist development; and his National Political Economy reads very well in a side-by-side with Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures.
I think Rakesh--who will correct me if I err--is on the side of arguing that the whole British Empire/Nazi Empire/French Empire/Other empire kind of thing is all "of a piece." Nazism may have been the worst of the batch but they were all bad cookies from the same oven. If you adhere to the view that national capitalist development=>imperialism=>mass organized cruelty, then List, as one of the earliest advocates of national capitalism, is the harbinger of much worse things to come. But in this sense List would be condemnable in the same way that Hamilton is condemnable for having successfully fostered a capitalist state that in a later era laid waste to the Philippines in a great to-do of mass slaughter. I don't see List as particularly more or less heinous than other national capitalist advocates of development; and Hamilton is very explicit in his advocacy of child labor, for example.
The question is whether there is some utility in making a distinction between the kinds of development that leads to mass mobilization ideology of conquest, like the Nazis, and casual policies of bourgeois exterminations, like the several hundred thousand killed in the Philippines or the ten million or so killed in King Leopold's Congo. I think most people would argue that there was something about the bourgeois empires that was less frightening than Nazism but you might have a hard time explaining it to s.o. who was starved to death by King Leopold. In sum, I don't think that List was better or worse (morally) than any other advocate of protectionist capitalist development; but Rakesh might argue that's precisely the point. I have read in Woodward's Origins of the New South that the slavocracy of the antebellum US hasd explicit kinds of conquest fascist ideologies for taking over the Caribbean. But I find myself scratching my head at the difference between this and the kind of run of the mill expand and kill the Indians insouciance of the non-slavocrats. In any case, the question I have for Rakesh along these lines is, whether he cares to distinguish List as in some way worse than a British advocate of Empire, an American advocate of empire, or any other early to mid-19th century advocate of empire.
For it is certainly the case that the Marxists saw in later imperialism something very new and very pernicious, both for the metropole and the periphery. Marx does have a great section on the expansion of colonialism at the end of v. 1 but it envisions the creation of "new zones of capitalism" which reproduce the bad conditions of the old; the other theories of imperialism usually draw some kind of core-periphery distinction. Marx opposes it because it is the spread of capitalism, and the spread of capitalism is not good. Naturally anyone who favors the spread of capitalism is going to look bad from that point of view.
That said, the question of the Marxist perspective, while useful to us, misses the point for what Friedrich List was writing about. List was attacking the Smithian line, not the Marxist. To get the gist of how his attack on Smith is organized you have to read Smith. Smith criticizes factory production (anticipating Marx's alienation), questions the patriotism of manufacturing capital, and lauds agricultural capitalism and the virtuous agricultural life. List organizes his defense by praising industrial development and urbanization. In particular he sees in cities the cultural centers which are the counterweight to the crushing monotony of agricultural life. It is not just that urban life is morally good in his view; he would argue that even under "exploitive conditions" the proletariat was better off than under the constraints of rural life and domination. Remember that rural life in Germany was a good deal more Junkerized and harsh than the rural yeomanry of England. Moreover he makes some very sophisticated arguments about urbanization and rising land values, and increasing land values makes more capital available to agriculture. But part of the tactical plan of praising industrial capital and its links to national life is precisely the fact that Smith had trashed the idea of good citizenship from the manufacturing class, which he saw as cartelistic and ready to move out of the country at a moment's notice.
So I find us all arguing in circles. The reason to like List is that he uncovered key weaknesses in Smith's arguments. Since neo-Smithian economics is the dominant ideology of our time, a clever analysis of its weaknesses, on its own terms (promoting industrial development, etc.) appeals to modern readers who dislike the dominant libertarian misrepresentations of Smithian economics and see in List a way to criticize both Smith and the free-trade-at-all-costs ideology which is at the core of capital's current approach to the massses of people, in the US or elsewhere.
The reason to dislike List is that, if you are convinced that capitalism at its core is rotten and that there is no utility to "criticizing it from within," is that in the end he proposes a managed capitalism in which, unlike some of the milquetoast varieties we get, some elements of exploitation (colonialism) are pretty explicitly left in view. And if you think that capitalism is the key evil of our time what is the point of "liking" someone who not only advocated the growht and development of capitalism, but, moreover, was a convenient tool for the imperial ideology of those who wanted to conquer Europe nearly 100 yeas later.
List is not Keynes, but like Keynes he takes certain precepts of "the market economy" and uses them to show that government intervention is essential to "make things work." If you think that capital is the problem, and that any program of action short of its overthrow might actually make capital stronger and perpetuate injustice, then you won't like Keynes or List. If you figure that like it or not, you're stuck with capitalism, then it becomes relevant to look at which theorists have provided ammunition to criticize the dominant regime without going so far outside capital's definition of "reasonable debate" as to put you on the margin of the margin. (Merely arguing for social welfare, which Rakesh disparaged, puts you on the extreme left of current American politics).
So I think that Rakesh, like Mark Jones, can make a strong case against bourgeois accommodationists like myself. The question is whether there is any point in doing so; we're not the problem: we merely get a lot of flak because unlike most bourgeois we actually talk to the more committed lefties. But when someone says that there is material of merit in List, what is meant that, using standard assumptions about the inevitability of a market, there is something in there that allows you to criticize the operations of that market. People who refer to List for this reason are *not* trying to justify the Nazi conquest of Europe.
Because, in the end, List did something of merit, which the Marxists, in their focus on class relations, missed out (unless we got to 20th century types like Wallerstein). List pointed out that there was a hierarchy of structural inequality in the economic relations among nations. He addressed himself to what he thought were pragmatic measures that would reduce that inequality, on the presumption that it would be better for everyone in the less-favored nations. In retrospect, it is clear that Nazism brought out a dark side to that argument. But it is nonetheless the case that the unequal structure of economic relations argument has been made by people without a fascist agenda, such as the Latin American dependencia writers.
We also have to remember, that to argue for industrial development in Germany during List's time was to argue for the weakening of a reactionary agricultrual class that opposed List during his lifetime and that was, if not as bad as the southern slavocracy in the west, pretty damn bad. The capitalist bourgeoisie had a historic role to play in the destruction of the feudal system of oppression. If you put List up against the needs of the working class, he looks reactionary. If you put him into the more appropriate role, the defender of bourgeois development against the Junkers, then he is progressive for his time. The existence of a free-trade merchant class in GErmany (which made its living carrying goods to and fro) should not be confused as a liberal democratic bourgeoisie. It was more like the merchant banks in New York that opposed tariffs and favored reconciliation with the South because they financed the cotton shipments and imports of manufactured goods.
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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