Austrian economists
In comparison with the German Reich, the support for measures of social policy from academic economists was more limited in Austria. Among the members of the Austrian School of economics a sceptical attitude prevailed, with Friedrich von Wieser as the main exception.
Wieser expressed sympathy for measures of social legislation and concern about increasing dominance of giant capitalist enterprise. Searching instruments to “elevate workers from their hopelessly dependent position and to give them a share in the profit of the enterprise” more effective than trade unions, Wieser considered producers’ co-operatives the most promising alternative (Wieser 1892 [1929]: 290).Anton Menger, Carl Menger’s younger brother, professor of law at the University of Vienna, developed his socialist ideas from a legal science perspective. He criticized civil law codes for their failure to protect the interests of the propertyless classes. He called for a peaceful transformation of the “individualistic power state” into a “popular worker’s state” by transferring the law of property rights and contract law from the sphere of civil law to public law, in order to model the legal system according to the needs of the majority of the population (Menger 1890 [1908], 1903). Among Anton Menger’s students was Theodor Hertzka, whose utopian novel Freiland envisages a market-socialist model of a Jewish colony in Kenya where land is freely available.