Rudolf Goldscheid
Goldscheid’s (1870-1931) book, Staatssozialismus oder Staatskapitalismus, published in 1917, is probably the best known contribution from a non-Marxist socialist in Austria, mainly due to Schumpeter’s essay Die Krise des Steuerstaates (1918) which was a reply to Goldscheid’s theses (Peukert 2009).
A capital levy of one-third which had to be paid in kind was the core idea of Goldscheid’s socialization concept, from which he expected a double effect: first, state ownership of one third of the productive capital would approximately balance state debt accumulated during the war, and enable the state to service its debt without further increase in taxes; secondly, in the mixed private/state economy, the state would be in a better position to enforce social priorities such as investment in infrastructure, the provision of public goods and social insurance, and also to exercise control over external trade (Goldscheid 1917 [1976]: 128 ff.).Goldscheid’s socialization program was embedded in a more fundamental concept of state socialism, or “social capitalism”. Even pre-war experience had shown that without ownership of the means of production the state was permanently constrained by excessive indebtedness. To become independent from capitalist dominance the state has to be recapitalized, freed of its debt and made independent from the need of gathering tax revenues. Goldscheid’s general thesis against which Schumpeter objected was that the tax state was a thing of the past, and that the future belonged to the debt-free “ownerstate” (“Besitzstaat”).