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In 1919, Otto Neurath was on trial for high treason, for his role in the short-lived Munich soviet republic. One of the witnesses for the defense was the famous scholar Max Weber.
Neurath was a capable scholar with good ideas, a newspaper recorded Weber as saying; but recently he seemed to have somewhat lost his grip on reality. That judgment would refer to Neurath’s economic thinking. In particular, his belief that a planned economy was viable, to an extent that the entire money economy could be abolished. This conviction, the seeds of which were planted by the economic thought of his father, and which was strengthened by his study and experience of war economies during the 1910s, would in fact be lifelong; Neurath would always be thinking of concrete ways to make co-operation and planning a reality.
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