Staatsschuld, Verfassung und Revolutionsprävention: Friedrich Buchholz und der Beginn der Sozialwissenschaft

Abstract

From within the environment of the Prussian reforms at the beginning of the 19th century, Friedrich Buchholz developed the social-scientific concept of Zukunftspolitik, which deals with the constitutional safeguard of public credit and the prevention of destructive revolution through targeted political reforms. In contrast to political romanticism (Adam Muller and others), Buchholz orients himself not toward the English system of representation, but toward the French model, to combine revolutionary popular sovereignty with representative government. Using the example of English public debt in the 18th century, he develops the political dialectic of materialist necessity and arbitrary contingency. Whereas sovereignty without representation in the maintenance of public credit inevitably leads to Jacobin Terror, parliamentarian representation without sovereignty leads to, in the English model, a general state of war. Europe’s future, according to Buchholz, thus depends on the reform of English Parliamentarianism.