It would be strange if such a mighty revolution in economic and social matters as I have sketched for you should not have found its reflection in the minds of thinking men. It would be wonderful, I think, if with this overturning of social institutions a revolution of social thought, science, and faith should not follow. We find in fact that parallel with this revolution in life fundamental changes have taken place in the sphere of social thought. By the side of the old social literature a new set of writings arises. The former belongs to the end of the previous and the beginning of the present century; it is that which we are accustomed to call the classic political economy; it is that which, after a development of about [20]one hundred and fifty to two hundred years, found the highest theoretical expression of the capitalistic economic system through the great political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. By the side of this literature, devoted to the capitalistic view of economics, now grows a new school of writings which has this general characteristic, that it is anti-capitalistic; that is, it places itself in conscious opposition to the capitalistic school of economics and considers the advocacy of this opposition as its peculiar task.
In accordance with the undeveloped condition of such economic thought it is, of course, a medley of explanations and claims as to what is and what should be, wherein the new literature expresses its opposition. All undeveloped literature begins in this tumultuous way, just as all unschooled minds at first slowly learn to distinguish between what is and what should be. And indeed in the immaturity of this new literature the practical element predominates greatly, as may readily be understood; there is a desire to justify theoretically the agitation, the new postulates, the new ideals.