The history of the economic thought in the test of the "universalism" of Othmar Spann

The Austrian economist Othmar Spann (1878-1950) proposes term "universalism" to qualify, in opposition to the "individualism", the doctrine and the method consisting in putting in first totality, society, in the logical order of "functional" analysis of economic facts. Spann applies then this universalist approach to his reading of the history of the economic thought. He sets so a lineage of universalist economists (Müller, Fichte, Baader, Stein, List, Thünen, Roscher, Hildebrand, Knies, Bernhardi, Schmoller) against the lineage of the individualistic economists (Smith, Ricardo, Rau, Say, Menger, Jevons).