Abstrakt: | The work The Socio-economic views of Ferdinand Zweig is the first among our academic
publications to show the biography and the whole scholarly and journalistic output of F. Zweig.
In the inter-war period, F. Zweig was a professor of economics at the Jagiellonian University,
and one of the main founders, side by side with Adam Krzyżanowski and Adam Heydel, of the liberal
current in the Polish socio-economic thought, i.e. of the so-called „Cracow school”. In that period
his research and publications were connected with economics. He was not, however, only a theorist
of economics. He showed a lively interest in the Polish and foreign economic scene, which resulted
in his becoming an editor of the economic column of the „Ilustrated Daily Courier”, a paper that was
particularly popular before the war, and in his writing of numerous articles that appeared in that daily.
In those publications a certain discrepancy manifested itself. In the province of theory, Ferdinand
Zweig, a representantive of classical economics, was a firm supporter of liberalism. In the field of
practical reality, however, the solutions put forward by F. Zweig often diverged from liberalism. Was
it then the case that a theorist of liberalism betrayed his own ideals in practice? It is impossible to
understand this without taking into account his historiosophical concept of the four systems of
economics. In the first half of the 20th century, the liberal ideas gave way to the nationalist and socialist
ones. This, according to Zweig, was an objective process, and, among other things, a consequence
of the monopolisation of the world economy. Is it possible, in a situation where the free market cannot
function properly, to recommend and apply the liberal recipes? A liberal who does not want to become
confined to the zone of theoretical considerations is forced to make some pragmatic concessions, and
to agree on, sometimes far-reaching, compromises, and, in particular, such a liberal has to accept the
growing role of the state in economy. This, as F. Zweig claims, is not tantamount to a capitulation.
He believed in the renaissance of liberalism, and maintained that man’s life is, above all, a sphere
of freedom. He suggested, furthermore, that liberalism should be enriched with elements of social
security, which made him one of the precursors of neoliberalism. F. Zweig’s historiographic concept
acquires an additional meaning in the light of the event that are nowadays taking place in the countries
of the East Central Europe.
The Second World War was an important breakthrough in F. Zweig’s life. Not only did it make
him stay in Britain for good, but also it changed his scholarly interests. F. Zweig quickly became
a well-known researcher in the field of sociology of labour. He wrote in English, and published many
works, popular in the West but unknown in Poland, which led up to his vision of the nascent „new,
acquisitive society” of the masses. This vision allows us to see that his faith in a renaissance of the
liberal ideals was disturbed. He still, however, advocated a search for new solutions, realising that
the highest aim was to defend an open society, open in the Popperian sense of the word. |