Einleitung: Staatsfinanzen und Konflikt

The following issue arose from a section at the Congress for Economic and Social History in Regensburg in March 2019 and focuses on fiscal conflicts in Europe from the early modern period until today. Distributive fiscal conflicts are seen here as a probe into the past which can increase our understanding of historical social structures. Fiscal history is analysed as a central arena of the modern state. The introduction provides an overview of current research into fiscal history in Germany and of the contributions presented in this focus issue.

Steuerzahlverhalten quantifizieren

From the 1880s scientists developed methods to measure (dishonest) tax payment behaviour. The first part of this article provides an overview of these methods and their development. The second part enquires into the function of measuring methods in the societal discourse about (honest) tax payments. The tax morale research of Günter Schmölders, carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, is then examined as a case study. The focus of interest is on the political advice that Schmölders gave, as based on his empirical results, and on the ideal image of the citizen and society which underlay the scientific method.

Die Entwicklung des „Steuerstaates“: Ursprung, Aufstieg und Ende eines finanzwirtschaftlichen Fortschrittsparadigmas

For decades, the Schumpeterian tax state was considered the central paradigm of Fiscal Sociology. However, it increasingly fails to meet many of the conceptual challenges of contemporary public finance. To demonstrate this, the paper undertakes a double re-contextualization of the discourse on public finance. Its development is traced back to evolutionary thinking, which Joseph Schumpeter updated around 1918. However, and following the rise of democratic capitalism after 1945, thinking about the tax state became intertwined with economic control. Its socio-political specifics were marginalized. Since the Great Recession of 2008/2009 and widening fiscal crises in advanced capitalist economies, this discursive narrowing has again become the subject of political and economic controversies.

“Robbery Made the Kingdom of Italy, Misery Will Unmake It”

This contribution analyses the nineteenth-century debate on one of the most hotly debated topics of Italian history: public debt and taxation. Starting in the 1850s, fiscal policies were weaponised by liberal nationalist elites and their opponents alike to promote their contrary worldviews by arguing over the merits of national unification and a parliamentary system on the basis of their fiscal outcomes. First Piedmont, then unified Italy, were eagerly expected by Catholics and Bourbon legitimists to default on their debts as a result of their moral and fiscal profligacy, while liberals were concerned about popular support for the national cause in a context of rising taxes. Southern Italy in particular was very vocal in denouncing its perceived fiscal mistreatment by the Italian government, an accusation the North rejected by portraying Southerners as unpatriotic tax evaders. Today, these narratives are re-emerging not only in public debates questioning the Risorgimento as the nation’s founding myth but also in the discourse about European integration.

Notstand und Sachverstand

In the aftermath of the First World War, the Weimar Republic found itself in financial disarray. Originally put forward by the antirepublican right, the idea of a forced loan emerged. The idea triggered harsh controversies regarding the shortfalls in the new state’s sovereignty and its lack of fiscal power within the framework of an international order. The conflicting images of the Weimar state effected the decisions finally taken. This article argues that a rhetoric of emergency was combined with notions of the expert as an apolitical figure in order to legitimize compulsory lending. Yet, contrary to contemporary perceptions, the Weimar forced loan was not a result of governmental impotence or an exceptional incident within the history of public finance. As a political tool, it helped to solve conflicts on the national as well as the international level, if only for a short period of time. As an instrument of state finance, it was not an act of failure to still fiscal needs the ‚normal way‘ but a conscious claim for the autonomy of the Weimar state. But the conviction that compulsory loans might be a legitimate element of fiscal politics under the auspices of a strong and well-informed state emerged only with the Second World War – in Germany as well as on an international level.

Wann ist ein Unternehmen profitabel?

This paper analyses how the profitability of public companies in the Federal Republic of Germany has been measured since the 1950s and under which conditions corporations were considered successful. For this purpose, textbooks and arguments of leading business economists, speeches and publications of managing directors and companies’ annual reports are surveyed, in order to identify trends and policy changes. The paper demonstrates that the introduction of shareholder value approaches, based on financial market data, in the 1990s led to a fundamental change in management practices, connected to innovative financial accounting techniques. Since then, companies’ profitability has been assessed in relation to benchmarks derived from financial market data. Financial markets thus became increasingly relevant for decisionmaking processes in the real economy.

Eine moralische Ökonomie der Steuern?

This article analyses the conflicts over imperial taxation in 17th-18th century Germany at local level. As imperial taxes have been mostly studied for the 16th century and usually from the perspective of Vienna, observing them from below gives a completely different perspective. One can observe, in particular, very strong and long-lasting conflicts between subjects and territorial princes. The article defends the idea that taxation conflicts are not only due to the size of the tax burden, but also linked to social and political considerations. They provide an excellent vantage point for analysing the Empire from below and the popular politics that emerged within the imperial body politic.

Kommunaler und kollektiver Widerstand gegen fiskalische Abschöpfung in der alten Eidgenossenschaft (Schweiz vor 1800)

Whenever there was a conflict about taxes in the Old Swiss Confederacy, it was about participation in collective resources in general, or about the question of who had to contribute to the commonwealth and to what extent, and who was allowed to benefit from it. In this debate the idea of a fair redistribution of goods among the full members of a political and economic community played a decisive role. Moreover, a tightening of the tax regime was never enforced unilaterally from above. Rather, newly demanded taxes were either withdrawn afterwards or at least offset by symbolic compensation. Given its tasks, the state had tobe organized as cheaply as possible. This is why spending restraint was given at least as much importance as fighting taxes. Tax conflicts were conservative and not revolutionary in character. The protesters did not aim to fundamentally reorganize the system but, with reference to the old tradition and old freedoms, only wanted to abolish the grievances that were perceived to be becoming increasingly worse. The current conditions were merely tobe rearranged according to the model of the idealized ancestral community.

Economic Cultures and Debates on Taxation in Italy after World War II: 1943–1948

This contribution analyses the change in the conception of taxation which occurred in Italy during the aftermath of World War II. From being a neutral mechanism to collect state revenue, in this period taxation became seen as a powerful political tool to redistribute income and wealth. The article primarily relies on material collected by the Economic Commission of the Ministry for the Constituent Assembly set up in 1945, a unique source which offers a comprehensive overview of the different conceptions of taxation at the time. Drawing upon their different economic and political ideologies, liberal economists and entrepreneurs, Christian Democrats, and Communists formulated alternative tax programmes. While liberal economists and entrepreneurs advocated the maintenance of the existing tax system on technical grounds, the Christian Democrats imposed a new conception of taxation as a means for income redistribution. Progressive and redistributive taxation was also present in the Communist programme, but their ambiguous tax views suffered from the lack of administrative and economic experience which liberal and Catholic economists had instead gathered before and partially even during the Fascist regime. The debate ended abruptly in 1947 with the exclusion of the left from government and the success of liberal conceptions. Nonetheless, during the 1960s, the Catholic emphasis on progressive and redistributive taxation incorporated the new Keynesian ideas on public finance and achieved a hegemonic position in the public debate, thus overcoming the traditional liberal view.