Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

Published work

The first volume of Capital und Capitalzins (Capital and Interest), which Ludwig von Mises decreed to be "the most eminent contribution to modern economic theory," was entitled Geschichte und Kritik der Capitalzinstheorien (sometimes referred to as History and Critique of Interest Theories, translated in 1890 as A Critical History of Economical Theory) (Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1884). It is an exhaustive study of the alternative treatments of interest: use theories, productivity theories, abstinence theories, and so on.

Included is a critique of Marx's exploitation theory. Böhm-Bawerk argued that capitalists do not exploit their workers; they actually help employees by providing them with an income well in advance of the revenue from the goods they produce, stating, "Labor cannot increase its share at the expense of capital." In particular, he argued that the Marxist theory of exploitation ignores the dimension of time in production, which he discussed in his theory of roundaboutness, and that a redistribution of profits from capitalist industries will undermine the importance of the interest rate as a vital tool for monetary policy. From this criticism it follows, according to Böhm-Bawerk, that the whole value of a product is not produced by the worker, but that labor can only be paid at the present value of any foreseeable output.

Karl Marx and the Close of His System (1896) examined Marx's analysis of value, claiming the basic error in Marx's system to have resulted from a self-contradiction of Marx's law of value, namely how the rate of profit and the prices of production of the third volume of Marx's Capital contradict Marx's theory of value in the first volume. He also attacks Marx for downplaying the influence of supply and demand in determining permanent price, and for deliberate ambiguity with such concepts.

In the first chapter of the first volume of Capital, Karl Marx proposed that the value of any commodity was generally reflected by the quantity of labor required, inequality being only a temporary exception. This therefore means that the level of value generated is completely independent of the quantity of capital of a company. In other words, the organic composition of capital (i.e. the ratio between the quantity of capital and the quantity of labor) of a company has no impact on the profits generated. However, the Marxist economist Conrad Schmidt argued that statistical analysis shows the level of profit is proportional to the quantity of capital of the company. Faced with this paradox, Karl Marx explains in the third volume of Capital that after production, capitalists will reallocate their capital towards companies having made the highest rates of surplus value until the rate of surplus value stabilizes for all companies in a sector of production (since capital is not a source of value and therefore of profit for Marx). Thus, the prices of goods will go from 'induced' by the value of labor to price of production (the sum of wages and annual profits), "The value and price of the commodity coincide only accidentally and exceptionally." However, Böhm-Bawerk points out the contradiction formulated with the relation between the value and the price of the good in the first volume, thus, the Marxist theory appears contradictory and the labor theory of value illogical.

Böhm-Bawerk's Positive Theorie des Kapitals (Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1889) (translated by William Smart as Positive Theory of Capital (1892)), offered as the second volume of Capital and Interest, elaborated on the economy's time-consuming production processes and the interest payments they entail. Further Essays on Capital and Interest (1921) was the third volume, which originated with appendices to the second volume. Book III (part of the second volume), Value and Price, develops Menger's ideas of marginal utility outlined in his Principles of Economics, to argue that the idea of subjective value is related to marginalism, in that things only have value insofar as people want such goods. To illustrate the principle, Böhm-Bawerk used the practical example of a farmer who is left with five sacks of corn after harvest to provide for his needs until the next harvest:

Being a thrifty soul he lays his plans for the employment of these sacks over the year. One sack he absolutely requires for the sustenance of his life till the next harvest. A second he requires to supplement this bare living to the extent of keeping himself hale and vigorous. More corn than this, in the shape of bread and farinaceous food generally, he has no desire for. On the other hand, it would be very desirable to have some animal food, and he sets aside, therefore, a third sack to feed poultry. A fourth sack he destines for the making of coarse spirits. Suppose... that he cannot think of anything better to do with the fifth sack than feed a number of parrots, whose antics amuse him. Naturally these various methods of employing the corn are not equal in importance.... And now, putting ourselves in imagination at the standpoint of the farmer, we ask, What in these circumstances will be the importance, as regards his well-being, of one sack of corn? ... How much utility will he lose if a sack of corn gets lost? Suppose we carry out this in detail. Evidently our farmer would not be very wise if he thought of deducting the lost sack from his own consumption, and imperilled his health and life while using the corn as before to make brandy and feed parrots. On consideration we must see that only one course is conceivable: with the four sacks that remain our farmer will provide for the four most urgent groups of wants, and give up only the satisfaction of the last and least important, the marginal utility—in this case, the keeping of parrots.

Böhm-Bawerk's critique of Marx's theories was criticized by Marxian economist Nikolai Bukharin. In his Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (1927), Bukharin argued Böhm-Bawerk's positions "express the bankruptcy of bourgeois political economy" and "ignores the historical element entirely". By contrast, Austrian economists have regarded Böhm-Bawerk's critique of Marx as definitive.

Many of Böhm-Bawerk's works were brought out in the United States by the Chicago industrialist and avid libertarian Frederick Nymeyer, through Libertarian Press, the US arm of the Austrian School of Economics.

Between 1880 and 1947 Böhm-Bawerk worked on the imputation theory first explained by Carl Menger between 1840 and 1921. It states that factor prices are determined by output prices. Böhm-Bawerk provided a variation of the theory that targeted the entrepreneurs, breaking up into three cases: 1. where the factor combination a + b exists such that neither a nor b as isolated piece produces any value at all. Thus if a or b were to be a loss, the other part of the "group" becomes wholly valueless. This implies that every factor can have the value of the whole group or alternatively can have no value (Kauder 179). 2. Where the combination a + b + c exists such that every piece has alternatively two values with a low utility or a lower utility. Then the two values are considered the maximum and minimum. Where a maximum is the group value and the minimum is the value of each individual entity being utilized separately. "Assume that the remaining glove can be used for polishing silverware. Then the maximum is the value of the whole pair minus the use as a polisher, and the minimum is the value as a polisher" (Kauder 179). 3. This just states how two complementary goods can find employment outside the original combination and the original combination can be preserved by replacing productive elements, which have been lost with other factors.