ABSTRACT
The economic difficulties of the 1930s thus raised serious problems for economic theory. These problems also made themselves felt in economic thinking in the Netherlands. Among Dutch economists the early neoclassical theory of the Austrian School had found broad adherence from the late nineteenth century onwards. A leading scholar in this tradition was C.A. Verrijn Stuart, who played a prominent and influential role in the small community of Dutch economists in the first decades of this century.1
According to Verrijn Stuart, basic theoretical insights into the fundamental laws governing the economic process were the result of long and meticulous study of the phenomena of economic life. Through disciplined observation and by logical reasoning of generations of economists, a theoretical understanding of economic laws had slowly emerged. This understanding clearly showed, according to Verrijn Stuart, that any deliberate interference with the economy would necessarily reduce the optimality of the outcome of the economic process. Any plea for specific forms of economic ordering through government intervention could therefore only be dictated by political motives and – by definition – could not be said to be rational in economic terms.
