Adolphe Landry and Otto Effertz: Lessons from a Debate

In his work Arbeit und Boden (Labor and Land) (1889) Otto Effertz outlined the foundations of a "Ponophysiocracy". This book which in its final, strongly modified version Les Antagonismes économiques was published in 1906, had a stronger impact on Adolphe Landry, who praises as well as criticizes the work of the German author who spent a greater part of his life in Paris. Both economists were strongly interested in the conflict between the private and the social interest. They belong to the small group of socialists who early on took notice of the development of marginalism in their economic theories but, in contrast to Walras and Pareto, did not enter into a mathematical analysis.