LIST, FRIEDRICH (1789-1846), German economist, was born at Reutlingen, Wurttemberg, on Aug. 6, 1789. Unwilling to follow the occupation of his father, who was a tanner, he became a clerk in the public service, and by 1816 had risen to the post of ministerial under-secretary. In 1817 he was appointed professor of administration and politics at the university of Tubingen, but the fall of the ministry in 1819 compelled him to resign. As a deputy to the WUrttemberg chamber, he was active in advocating administrative reforms. He was eventually expelled from the chamber and in April 1822 sentenced to ten months' imprisonment from which he was released on promising to emigrate to America, where he lived from 1825 to 1832. Successful both as a journalist and as a speculator in coal and railways, he was employed on a mission to Paris and in 1832 became United States consul at Leipzig. He strongly advocated the extension of the railway sys tem in Germany, and the establishment of the Zollverein was due largely to his enthusiasm and ardour. Ill health and financial diffi culties darkened his later days, and on Nov. 3o, 1846, he died by his own hand.
List holds historically one of the highest places in economic thought as applied to practical objects. His principal work is en titled Das Nationale System der Politischen Okonomie (1841). Though his practical conclusions were different from those of Adam Muller (1779-1829), he was largely influenced bdth by him and Alexander Hamilton. It was particularly against the cos mopolitan principle in the modern economical system that he protested, and against the absolute doctrine of free trade, which was in harmony with that principle. He gave prominence to the national idea, and insisted on the special requirements of each na tion according to its circumstances and degree of development. He refused to Smith's system the title of the industrial, which he thought more appropriate to the mercantile system, and des ignated the former as "the exchange-value system." He denied the parallelism asserted by Smith between the economic conduct proper to an individual and to a nation, and held that the imme diate private interest of the separate members of the community would not lead to the highest good of the whole. He maintained that national unity, which is the result of past development, is necessary to the individual whose interests should be subordi nated to the preservation of this unity. The nation having a con tinuous life, its true wealth must consist—and this is List's funda mental doctrine—not in the quantity of exchange-values which it possesses, but in the full and many-sided development of its productive powers. Its economic education should be more im portant than the immediate production of values, and it might be right that one generation should sacrifice its gain and enjoy ment to secure the strength and skill of the future. In the sound and normal condition of a nation which has attained economic maturity, the three productive powers of agriculture, manufac tures and commerce should be alike developed. But the two latter
factors are superior in importance, as exercising a more effective and fruitful influence on the whole culture of the nation, as well as on its independence. But for the growth of the higher forms of industry, only those countries of the temperate zones are adapted, whilst the torrid regions have a natural monopoly in the production of certain raw materials; and thus between these two groups a division of labour spontaneously takes place.
List then goes on to explain his theory of the stages of economic development through which the nations of the temperate zone naturally pass, in advancing to their normal economic state. These are (I) pastoral life, (2) agriculture, (3) agriculture united with manufactures ; whilst in the final stage agriculture, manufactures and commerce are combined. The economic task of the state is to bring into existence through legislative and administrative action the conditions required for the progress of the nation through these stages. Out of this view arises List's scheme of industrial politics. Every nation should begin by fostering its agriculture by free trade and when it is economically so far advanced that it can manufacture for itself, a system of protection should be employed to allow the home industries to develop themselves fully, When the national industries have grown sufficiently strong, the highest stage of progress has been reached; free trade should again become the rule, and the nation be incorporated with the universal industrial union. What a nation loses for a time in exchange values during the protective period she gains in the long run in productive power. The practical conclusion which List drew for Germany was that she needed for her economic progress an extended and conveniently bounded territory reaching to the sea-coast both on north and south, and a vigorous expansion of manufactures and commerce, and that the way to the latter lay through protective legislation with a customs union comprising all German lands, and a German marine with a Navigation act. List ably represented the tendencies and demands of his time in his own country; his work had the effect of fixing the attention, not merely of the speculative and official classes, but of practical men generally, on questions of political economy; and his ideas were undoubtedly the economic foundation of modern Germany, as applied by the practical genius of Bismarck.
See biographies of List by Goldschmidt (Berlin, 1878), Jentsch (Ber lin, 1901) and Hoeltrel (Iwo): M. E. Hirst, Life of Friedrich List (London, 1909) contains a bibliography and a reprint of List's Outlines of American Political Economy (1827). See also the article by Eheberg in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften vol. vi. (4th ed., 1925).