insights into the nature of economy and of law. His study Über die Grundlehren der von Adam Smith begründeten Volkswirtschaftstheorie treats all aspects of the classical liberal theory of economy and attempts to prove that this theory does not really give an adequate account of the fundamental structure of economy, because this theory postulates that economic laws are the product of the individual drive for profit. He maintains that economic laws depend primarily on social legal institutions, especially on the institution of property and the social changes it undergoes.
The central idea of his conception of society and economy is the idea of 'social law'. Social law, as he understands it, is the order of cooperation for the common cultural tasks in modern society. Roesler is one of the founders of the so-called 'historico-sociologico-juridical school' of German economic science. The later head of the school, Adolph Wagner, is greatly indebted to him. Roesler's notion of the conditioning of economic life through social law represented a new and incisive critique of the notion of unlimited capitalistic profit. The historical school (Roscher, Schmoller, etc.), then predominant in Germany, and the so-called 'Kathedersozialismus' fought capitalism from a moral standpoint; Roesler, on the other hand, argues on the basis of the essential nature of the economy, which he considers to be preeminently determined by the legal structure of society. Roesler does not derive his idea of social law from postulates of ethics, but from an analysis of the historical social phenomena. He had his own concept of society, closely related to Lorenz von Stein's theory. Society, in the truest sense of the word, is for Roesler modern civilized society, i. e., that sphere of free collaboration of human beings for cultural purposes that was formed on the foundations of free enterprise and emancipation from the feudal and absolute state. The essence of this society Roesler defines historically and sociologically as follows. From the beginning of modern times free enterprise worked a fundamental change in cultural life in its entirety. It provided a new basis for communication and cooperation among men, and on this basis a new society in free communication developed a new form of culture.
Modern society, nonetheless, is something more than just the product of profit interests, and its organization is something more than just the natural order of competitive interests that Adam Smith thought it was. A higher factor is at work, the foundation of which is to be found in the conscious recognition of the personal freedom of human nature. This freedom is a social freedom, i. e., it is conditioned by and oriented toward social cultural life. True human freedom is a freedom to realize human and cultural values which cannot be realized without the collaboration of men; it is a freedom, therefore, that is closely connected with the cultural tasks of the community. On this principle of social freedom is built the legal organization of modern society. This does not mean that the actual social order is already determined in all its elements by the principles of social freedom. It means, though, that this general consciousness of culture and law is becoming more and more important and cries out more and more for general recognition.
Roesler's lasting merit is his analysis of the concept and of the system of social law, an analysis never surpassed by the jurists who later dealt with the category of social law. It is, therefore, still of great importance today. Social law, as understood by Roesler, is not only the legal harmonization of capital and labor which today we call social legislation, as, for example, in the case of laws governing management and labor. His concept is far more basic: it is rather the legal organization of the entire society as it orientates the full activity of modern society, both material and spiritual, toward the complete development of a social freedom.
Roesler opposes his idea of social freedom and social law to the individualistic and naturalistic idea of natural law expounded by Locke and Rousseau, and he contests their arguments and their interpretations of natural human rights. He does not argue against the rights themselves, but believes that they find a better foundation in his own theory. Natural freedom, which men of the Enlightenment derived from the abstract essence of man, is found in their theory cut off from all its original historical and social bonds. Their freedom is the freedom of an uncultured Robinson Crusoe; it contradicts the social and cultural nature of man which develops historically, and destroys the order of social culture. The liberalistic theory of economics is an extension of this wrong ideal of freedom.
From his sociological point of view, Roesler sees the nature of the modern state: 'We can see that economic conditions influence political law and produce periodically new legal formations to such an extent that we are tempted to say that the more modern the constitution, the more it will be a product of the economy. Thus the various constitutions with their various electoral systems, above all, their universal suffrage, can be said to be exact mirrors of the social configuration of the people and must, scientifically speaking, be understood as such.' The dynamic force behind the constitutional movement of the 19th century is, in the eyes of Roesler, that of the capitalistic class trying to secure in parliament the right of decision on such matters as taxes and the state budget, hoping thereby to be able to dominate political life.
'The dominating factor in the constitution and administration of the liberal bourgeois state is capital; and money dominates society through the public state powers which have to serve its interests.' In this Roesler, as well as von Stein, sees the fundamental problem of the liberal state. The constitutional state, which took its origin in the urge to freedom of the bourgeois, acquisitive class, guarantees this class the freedom to unlimited development of property. The propertyless class of the workers in the liberal, capitalistic society is, on the other hand, threatened by exploitation by capital and is driven to aspire to a violent change of the existing order. The liberal bourgeois state threatens to fall apart into an anarchy of class interests. Political parties, exponents of the intersts of the various classes, try through a majority in parliament to gain predominance in the state and to have the state serve their interests. Pure parliamentarism cannot, therefore, be the foundation for an equilibrium of social interests and for a harmonious ordering of the community of people.
For Roesler there is in modern capitalistic society only one way to maintain the health of cultural life and to harmonize the various social interests, and that is to intensify the general consciousness of social law and to foster the recognition of this law in all branches of cultural activity. This is the aim of Roesler's principal book on law Das soziale Verwaltungsrecht. The viewpoint from which the functioning of public administration and of administrative law in modern society is treated in this book is something new in the science of administrative law. Roesler wants to free administrative law from the limitations of police law and to introduce into it an understanding of social reality in modern capitalistic society. The cultural life of society can achieve order only through 'social administration'. By social administration is meant the collaboration of all social organizations toward the aim of achieving the common cultural ends of modern society. The law which harmonizes the activity of these various organizations is 'social administrative law', the concrete form taken by 'social law'. The state is not the exclusive nor even the primary organ of this social administration; cultural life in a free society pursues cultural aims essentially independent of the state and society has created its own instruments of social corporation for the fulfillment of these aims.
These organs of social corporation are, besides the local self-administrative bodies, the corporations formed for the satisfaction of various cultural needs of society, corporations to achieve the common good, for instance, in the areas of commerce, communication, hygiene, and education. These nonstate organizations pursuing a public good are organs of social administration, and must be recognized as 'public corporations', as self-governing bodies of public law. To these self-governing organs of free cultural life finally accedes the state as the central organ of social administration which has to integrate the activities of the self-governing cultural bodies and serve the aims of social culture.
The characteristic trait of Roesler's conception of administration is his stress on 'social self-administration' which one does not find so clearly in any other work of administrative law of that time. All public administration must be social, that is, directed toward the cultural tasks of the free community, and it must be self-administering, that is, based on the free activity of the members of the community themselves. Roesler does not develop his idea of self-administration merely abstractly. By an exposition of the whole existing German administrative law he tries to show that, in fact, the growth of social self-administration is the inner tendency of modern public administration. And