Ivan Kinkel’s (1883–1945) Theory of Economic Development

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the “Attempt at Constructing a New Theory of Economic Development and Cultural Cycles”, published by the Bulgarian economist and sociologist of Russian origin, Ivan Kinkel (1883–1945) in 1921. Kinkel’s theory, although unknown outside Bulgarian academic circles, carries a range of original ideas and new insights within the frame of the Schmollerprogramm. It emphasises the importance of studying economic development as sociocultural evolutionary change, focuses on the role of unity in social life and the plurality of human motives and attempts to methodologically link theory and history into a multidisciplinary approach. Kinkel’s work in general, and his theory of cyclical development in particular, can not only be of value for the study of economic thought and the diffusion of ideas, but can also offer insights into the forces underlying the profound changes that we have been witnessing recently.

1. Introduction

The totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that came to power in the 1920s and 1930s led to the emigration of large groups of scholars, including economists. This movement, which manifested itself both physically and intellectually as a transfer and emergence of new knowledge, has been subject to numerous analyses mostly in relation to German-speaking economists and social scientists. The other large emigrant wave, that of the Russian-speaking economists who left Russia after the war, has also been studied, although to a much lesser extent and not as systematically. The lack of research is most obvious with regards to Russian economists from the Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Serbia mainly, where these economists were prominent and seen as major pillars of the economic and social sciences in the period between the two World Wars.

In the case of Bulgaria, mentioning just four of them would be sufficient to reveal the importance of Russian economists in the formation of economic science and theory in the country. The economists in question are Simeon Demostenov (1886–1966), Ivan Kinkel (1883–1945), Naum Dolinsky (1890–1968) and Oskar Anderson (1887–1960). The most internationally renowned among them is Oskar Anderson, one of the founders of statistical and business cycle analyses, who contributed greatly to the formation of a school of Bulgarian scholars and was in touch with the most prominent economists of his time. He was also mentioned in Schumpeter’s History of Economic Analysis and ended his career in Germany.

Among these, Demostenov and Kinkel are especially interesting as they epitomise the two main approaches to making economic science:

• Demostenov: the construction of a pure economic theory in isolation from other social spheres
• Kinkel: an economic methodology encompassing the syncretic unity with the sociological, psychological, historical and biological fields of analysis

Despite their fundamental differences, both stand out as vivid expressions of the encyclopaedic education, sophistication, and style of writing typical of the pleiad of Russian economists and social scientists of that period (including S. Bulgakov, P. Struve, M. Tugan-Baranovsky, J. Kulisher, N. Berdiyaev, S. Frank, A. Bogdanov, etc.).

Kinkel’s theory of economic development, set out in his work “An Attempt at Constructing a New Theory of Economic Development of Cultural Mankind” (completed in 1918, published with minor revisions in 1921), deserves attention for three reasons:

1. Peripheral contribution: It offers insights into the emergence of economic theory in the peripheral Balkan countries and demonstrates the diffusion of economic ideas and knowledge, understood within Schmoller’s project for systematic analysis of economic development.

2. Contemporary relevance: During periods of intense social and economic turbulence, it is necessary to revamp economic theory with the goal of identifying long-term patterns, phases and dynamic forces. Kinkel’s theory, created in equally critical times, offers ideas that could inspire new theoretical interpretations.

3. Post-communist context: The need to generalise and rationalise the period of post-communist development over the past two decades — a process that has been in the background for a long time.

2. A Brief Account of Ivan Kinkel’s Life and Work

Ivan Germanovich Kinkel — Bulgarian economist, Russian by origin and education — was born in Bryansk on 18 January 1883 and migrated to Bulgaria in late 1917. He left a lasting trail in a number of fields of scientific knowledge:

• Professor in economic history, economics and history of economic thought at the University of Sofia (1921–1945) and the Free University of Sofia (1920–1945)
• Founder and first chairman of the Bulgarian Sociological Society (1931–1939)
• Founder of psychoanalysis in Bulgaria (co-founder of the Psychoanalytic Circle in 1921)

Education

• Legal and economic sciences in Russia (Emperor’s College in Tsarskoe Selo)
• Medicine in Berlin (1903–1905)
• Social philosophy, graduated from the University of Leipzig (1906–1908); doctoral thesis on Aristotle’s theology (Summa cum Laude, 8 July 1911)
• Psychoanalysis in Zurich (1908–1911)

Biographical Notes

According to archival records (National Archive, 620/1/22 — the record of his wife, the sociologist Mara Kinkel, 1885–1960):

• Kinkel lost his right hand in the First Russian Revolution of 1905
• He was personally invited by Lenin at the beginning of October 1917 to chair the Supreme Economic Council; however, this nomination failed because of health issues
• Kinkel and his wife travelled to Bulgaria using a note written personally by Lenin to cross the Russian frontier
• Unfortunately, Kinkel had to destroy the note during their transit through Ukraine, which was at that time in the hands of the counter-revolutionary Nestor Makhno. In his wife’s recollections, Kinkel said he was losing the autograph of “the most influential man of our century, the maker of a new epoch”

Kinkel’s works extend to nearly all major social areas: economics, economic history, history of economic sciences, sociology, social psychology, law, philosophy, psychoanalysis. All these studies follow a major goal: to find and present his views on the mechanisms, driving forces and forms of social and economic development. His starting point — and life project — was his 1921 book on economic development and cultural cycles, which he further developed in various directions.

Ivan Kinkel died in Sofia on May 25, 1945.

3. Theory of Economic Development and Economic Cycles

In 1921, Ivan Kinkel published his fundamental study on economic development (312 pages), its cyclic character and dynamic forces.

Kinkel’s Own Summary (Thesis)

Two Analytical Levels

The periodisation operates on two levels:

Level 1 — Three Economic Eras (Cultural Cycles):

Level 2 — Four Economic Forms (reproduced within each era):

Dynamic Forces

The progress of economic or cultural periods is determined by:

At the Era level (exogenous):

• Division of labour
• Technological developments
• Population dynamics

At the Economic Form level (endogenous):

• Productive forces
• Consumption forces
• Cultural and social needs

Expressed as functional relationships:

When a given economic form comes into conflict with the development of productive and consumption forces — “becomes too narrow for them” (to use Marx’s words) — a social change occurs, most often as social revolution.

Capitalism Across Eras

Kinkel’s view that capitalist relations existed in the ancient world was drawn from Eduard Meyer, Theodor Mommsen, Max Weber, Joseph Kulisher and others. This contradicts Marx’s interpretation where capitalism is an independent phase starting in the 18th century. Kinkel’s approach theoretically “undervalues” capitalism by placing it on a lower analytical level — not as a civilization era, but as an economic form that comes and goes in the alternation of the four forms.

Kinkel defines capitalism (form 3) as: the existence of large income in kind or in money; a large-scale (en grand) economy with a wide market; amalgamation of a large number of human work force, cooperation, and above all exploitation of free and unfree human labour. Capitalism existed in all three cultural periods but took different, progressively more complex forms:

• Egypt: agrarian capitalism on a professional principle and barter economy (3300–2000 BC)
• China: agrarian capitalism in Emperor period (2205–1766 BC)
• Greece: agrarian and commercial based on slave and wage labour (5th century BC to end of Alexander’s empire)
• Rome: similar (5th century BC to Emperor period)
• Medieval Europe: privilege-based agrarian feudal capitalism (to 13th century)
• Western Europe: agrarian-commercial-industrial market speculation capitalism (16th–18th century)
• Eastern Europe: same patterns with a century delay

The Fourth Form (State-Collectivist)

The fourth form inevitably comes after the capitalist economy in each era. In Egypt, Greece, Rome, and later in Western and Eastern Europe, this phase shows astonishing similarities: centralised planning, administrative and statistical control, nationalisation of labour, predominance of politics over economy.

Writing in the aftermath of WWI, Kinkel identified features of transition in the Bolshevik rule during War communism. He noted that phenomena like state shops, food rationing, destruction of money, state peasants, and state employees repeat the most primary forms of state economy from previous cultural periods (even as far back as Egyptian period). This system is characterised by power-based exploitation through political instruments.

Kinkel successfully foresaw the state-organised regimes emerging later in Europe (Mussolini in 1922, etc.). He later expanded this analysis in Economic System and Social Structure of Contemporary European Society (1930).

The Biogenetic Law of Social Development

Kinkel formulated the “law of social development” as a manifestation of a “universal biogenetic law of development” (originally formulated by biologist Ernst Haeckel):

Each new economic practice or activity (transport, finances, banking, communications), which emerged later in development, passes individually through the same phases as preceding social activities — and most importantly, at accelerated pace. This bears an astonishing resemblance to ideas of fractality of social and economic life (Benoit Mandelbrot): similar irregular processes and forms reproduced as mirror images on different system levels and scales.

Combination of Linearity and Cyclicality

Kinkel combined:

• Linearity and irreversibility of evolution in terms of eras (driven by technical progress and population dynamics)
• Cyclicality of economic forms within each era (forms reproduce themselves while never really repeating the old forms)

The three eras do not reproduce themselves — no cyclicality between them exists. They follow a single direction driven by technical progress. Kinkel also mentioned the existence of a new fourth wave (the “cycle of world culture” — what we would today call globalisation), but was extremely careful in his predictions.

Kinkel’s Critique of Other Theories

Kinkel systematically analysed the strengths and limitations of models by Friedrich List, Bruno Hildebrand, Karl Rodbertus, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, Karl Bücher, Gustav Schmoller, Werner Sombart, Waldemar Mitscherlich, and others. His critiques:

• Rodbertus: Misinterpreted the economy of ancient times as being closed, domestic and natural
• Marx: Criticised for separating the feudal system from the capitalist one; questioned the Marxist law of dynamics as contradiction between base and superstructure
• Kautsky: Criticised for dating capitalism to the 18th century
• Bücher and German historical school: Criticised for “purely technical or organisational criteria” for periodisation
• Sombart: Admired for similarities with Kinkel’s ideas but rejected for “theoretical mess”; later criticised for his “Mediaeval-oriented pseudo-national socialist economy”

The only major scholar of economic development absent from Kinkel’s list is Schumpeter (1911 book). Kinkel mentioned Schumpeter only once, apparently considering him more preoccupied with Modern Capitalism while Kinkel’s theory had far-reaching objectives encompassing the economic development of the whole human civilization.

4. Interdisciplinary Approach to Social Phenomena

Kinkel’s range of topics and social scientific areas is so vast that to a modern scholar, accustomed to narrow specialisation, the diversity would look impossible. During the communist period, Kinkel was criticised for being “eclectic” — Kiril Grigorov called his models “kinkeliads”.

However, viewed against the encyclopaedic knowledge of Russian economists of that period (Bulgakov, Struve, Tugan-Baranovsky, Bogdanov), Kinkel is a competent and original author. Almost all his publications could be viewed as continuation of his theory of development — a kind of Kinkelprogramm.

Factors of Development Studied by Kinkel

Apart from economic factors, Kinkel systematically examined:

• Legal and political factors
• Religious and ethnic factors
• Scientific factors
• Aesthetic-artistic factors
• Ethical factors — examined in The Ethical Factor in Economic History (1930), showing the relativity of the relationship between economics and ethics across eras
• Natural factors — geography, climate, genetics, races — in Natural Factors in the Economic and Cultural Life of Peoples (1942)
• Biological factors — in Sociology and Biology (1939)
• Psychological factors (endogenous) — social and individual psychology

Psychology and Psychoanalysis

Kinkel’s interest in social and mass psychology (Le Bon, Tarde) was expressed in several studies, notably:

• Social Psychology in Revolutionary Movements (1924) — an analysis of revolutions from the viewpoint of psychology, psychoanalysis and medicine. Major manifestations of revolutions defined as: maniac psychosis, cyclophrenia, mass insanity, mania furiosa, mania persecutoria, paranoia, psychic epidemics, megalomania, euphoria, sexual extremities, alcoholism, drug addiction.

Key ideas:

Kinkel formulated the “law of psychological regression” of every revolutionary society on primitive psychic forms of behaviour, while also seeing revolutions as a form of creation and definite social advancement.

His article on psychology and religion (1921), published in German in 1922 following the recommendation of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank, was translated into Swedish, Russian and English. In it, Kinkel proposed a periodisation of psychological development in three eras: animistic (magical-mythological), religious, and (from the 17th century) objective-scientific.

Sociology

Methods of Knowledge of Contemporary Sociology (1931, 200 pages) systematically presented Kinkel’s sociological approach. He was considered one of Bulgaria’s groundbreaking sociological authors. Key methodological positions:

The only true method is the eclectic or synthetic-eclectic method — methodological monism that overstates certain factors (especially economic) is rejected as a “universal phlogiston.”

Political Analysis

In the mid-1930s, Kinkel applied his approach to:

• Crisis of parliamentary and party democracy
• Emergence of authoritarian regimes
• Evolution towards planned economy and autarchy
• Analysis of fascism (published under pen names M. Mladenov and A. Fridyung due to the extremity of his views)

Kinkel’s analyses of fascism in many respects foretold the interpretations of classical authors (such as De Felice, 1969).

Historical-Comparative Approach

Kinkel applied the historical, comparative and evolutionary approach to both individual economic and social institutions and society as a whole. Notable studies include:

• The Bulgarian economic culture of proto-Bulgarians (1926)
• The Renaissance economy (1938, 1939)
• Critiques of Jacques Nathan’s Marxist approach to Bulgarian economic history
• Critiques of Ivan Sakuzov’s purely factual approach to trade and crafts in Bulgaria during the Middle Ages

Kinkel criticised both extremes: Nathan for applying a purely philosophical/Marxist template without facts, and Sakuzov for presenting facts without theoretical analysis.

5. Concluding Remarks

What follows from Kinkel’s theory of economic development:

1. Filling gaps: Studying Kinkel’s work is part of “bridging the gaps” in the history of economic and social thought in Bulgaria and Europe, and the history of emigration of Russian economists in the interwar period. His theory of economic development and cultural cycles is an original input of world significance.

2. Within the Schmollerprogramm: Kinkel’s work is a valuable contribution alongside the youngest historical school (Weber, Sombart, Schumpeter), and as a representative of the famous generation of Russian economists and social scholars from the early 20th century.

3. Contemporary resonance: Many of Kinkel’s ideas have contemporary methodological and theoretical relevance. We need a longer-term historical perspective to capture social trends and patterns. These trends are not deterministic and always carry new elements, new processes and new forms. We should investigate society over longer historical periods and not just focus on currently existing states and problems.

Supplementary Context

Bogatzky (2015) — “Fundamental Principles and Factors of Economic Development According to Kinkel”

A companion paper by Nikolay Bogatzky (Università degli studi Niccolò Cusano), published December 2015, further popularises Kinkel’s ideas on the 70th anniversary of his disappearance. Key points from this paper:

Source: ResearchGate

Principal Works of Ivan Kinkel

In Bulgarian

In German

Abbreviations

References Cited in Nenovsky (2015)

In Bulgarian and Russian

• Atanassov, N. (1997). Psychoanalytical Movement During the Interwar Period. Sofia: BAS, Marin Drinov Publishing House.
• Bekyarov, K. (2010). Economic Thought in Bulgaria From Mid-XIX to Mid-XX Century. Sofia: Stopanstvo.
• Bulgakov, S. (2007 [1913–1917]). History of Economic and Social Science. Moscow: Astrel.
• Danailov, G. (1934). Fundamentals of Political Economy, 2nd ed. Plovdiv: HR.G. Danov.
• Danailov, G. (1933). Report on Dr. Ivan Sakuzov’s works. AUS (FL), 1–16.
• Egorova, L. (2008). East European Sociology. Kazan: Kazan State University.
• Gloveli, G. (2008). Historico-stadial and Evolutionary Conceptions in Russian Economic Thought. Moscow: Institute of Economics.
• Golenkova, Z. (2011). History of Sociological Thought in Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow: Peoples’ Friendship University.
• Grigorov, K. (1960). Development of the Bourgeoisie Economic Thought in Bulgaria Between the Two World Wars. Sofia: Nauka I Izkustvo.
• National Library. (2008). Russian Emigration in Bulgaria (1878–2006). Sofia: National Library.
• Penchev, P. (2012). Professor Ivan Kinkel as Theoretician of Economic History. Sofia: UNWE.
• Struve, P. (1913). Economy and Price. St. Petersburg: V. Ryabushinskii.

In Western Languages

• Atanassov, N. (2002). Psychotherapy in Bulgaria. In A. Pritz (Ed.), Globalized Psychotherapy. Vienna: Facultas, pp. 1–16.
• De Felice, R. (2005 [1969]). Le interpretazioni del fascismo. Roma-Bari: Laterza.
• Ebner, A. (2000). Schumpeter and the Schmollerprogramm. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 10: 355–72.
• Iorga, N. (1925). Histoire Des États Balkaniques Jusqu’à 1924. Paris: Gamber.
• Johansson, M. (2006). Om psykoanalys på svenska. Psykoanalytisk Tid/Skrift, 6–8.
• Langer, W. (1958). The next assignment. American Historical Review, 63 (2): 283–304.
• Peukert, H. (2001). The Schmoller renaissance. History of Political Economy, 33 (1): 71–116.
• Schefold, B. (2011). Marx, Sombart, Weber and the debate about the genesis of modern capitalism. ESHET Conference, Istanbul.
• Schmoller, G. (1905/1906 [1900]). Principes d’économie politique. Paris: Giard & Brière.
• Shionoya, Y. (2001). Rational reconstruction of the German Historical School. In The German Historical School. London: Routledge.
• Spahn, P. (2004). Weber et la typologie des modes d’activité industrielle de Karl Bücher. Les Cahiers du Centre de Recherches Historiques, 34: 1–16.

Note on Portraits

No photograph or portrait of Ivan Kinkel was found in any of the source documents (the Nenovsky 2015 paper, the Bogatzky 2015 paper, or the ResearchGate figure pages). The paper contains only two diagrams: Figure 1 — Periodisation of economic development according to Ivan Kinkel and Figure 2 — Factors of economic development in Kinkel’s model. Given Kinkel’s obscurity outside Bulgarian academic circles and his death in 1945, a photographic portrait may exist only in Bulgarian university archives or the National Archive holdings related to Mara Kinkel (fund 620/1/22).

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