Alfred Amonn, “Der Unternehmergewinn” (1928)

The file is a standalone theoretical article in three sections—concept, genesis, and magnitude—on entrepreneurial profit as a category of exchange-value theory. Amonn opens with profit as a positive value difference between market product and production means, then isolates the entrepreneurial variant from monopoly, conjunctural, and speculative gains.

Eine besondere und die für die Theorie interessanteste Erscheinungsart des Gewinnes ist der „Unternehmergewinn“.

English translation: A particular form of profit, and the one most interesting from the standpoint of theory, is "entrepreneurial profit."

Amonn’s thesis is that pure entrepreneurial profit is not a “normal” reward for owning capital, managing a firm, or bearing risk. It is a residual surplus that arises from a distinctive entrepreneurial function: the final economic disposition of production means toward a concrete purpose. Legal risk and cost-laying are only accompaniments; managerial direction is labor and can be hired. The entrepreneur’s function cannot be traded as a service because it is the act of determining use itself.

Diese Leistung ist die Bestimmung des konkreten Produktionszweckes für Produktionsmittel oder die wirtschaftliche Disposition über Produktionsmittel zu einem konkreten Produktionszweck.

English translation: This performance consists in determining the concrete productive purpose for means of production, that is, the economic disposition over means of production for a concrete productive purpose.

This definition lets Amonn separate entrepreneur, capitalist, laborer, landowner, and director. It also underlies his answer to the joint-stock problem: the shareholder is entrepreneur insofar as he determines the economic use of the capital committed, while directors perform substitutable “Unternehmerarbeit.” The essay’s first section therefore builds a strict taxonomy. It distinguishes capitalist and non-capitalist entrepreneurship, then more decisively static and dynamic entrepreneurship. A static entrepreneur repeats an existing disposition; a dynamic one actually undertakes something new.

Der dynamische Unternehmer ist derjenige, der wirklich, positiv etwas „unternimmt“, der eine neue, noch nicht verwirklichte Disposition über Produktionsmittel trifft, eine „neue Kombination“ durchführt (SCHUMPETER) und insoferne erst eine positive Unternehmerleistung vollbringt.

English translation: The dynamic entrepreneur is the one who really and positively "undertakes" something, who makes a new, not yet realized disposition over means of production, who carries out a "new combination" (SCHUMPETER), and only in this respect actually performs a positive entrepreneurial function.

The second section uses this taxonomy to reject the naive doctrine of a necessary “normal profit.” Amonn concedes that own capital and own labor require compensation if they are to remain in an enterprise, but these are factor returns and cost coverage, not entrepreneurial profit. The latter appears only after all market-valued services—including managerial labor—have been accounted for.

Der „Gewinn“ in unserem Sinne ist kein Entgelt für irgendeine Leistung (sei es von Kapital oder Arbeit), kein Wert oder Preis für irgendein Produktionsmittel, überhaupt kein Wert, sondern ein Wertüberschuß.

English translation: "Profit" in our sense is not a remuneration for any service (be it of capital or of labor), nor a value or price for any means of production, indeed not a value at all, but a surplus of value.

The apparent contradiction between enterprise motives and competitive price theory is thus dissolved. People may found or maintain firms for independence, enjoyment of enterprise, secure employment of their own labor and capital, or inertia; none of these requires a pure surplus. In a fully static economy with free competition and equal capital or credit access, competition would eliminate any excess of product value over costs. Pure entrepreneurial profit requires a new disposition that lowers costs or raises product value while the old valuation of production means initially persists.

Eine solche Disposition hat spezifisch dynamischen Charakter und deshalb muß der Unternehmergewinn als eine spezifisch dynamische Erscheinung angesehen werden.

English translation: Such a disposition has a specifically dynamic character, and for that reason entrepreneurial profit must be regarded as a specifically dynamic phenomenon.

Here Amonn’s affinity with Schumpeter is clearest, though his formulation remains rooted in value theory. Development produces profit because a non-marketable act of disposition changes the productive result before factor prices and product prices adjust. Imitation then erodes the surplus: competitors bid up relevant inputs, expand output, and press product prices down until the margin disappears. Where unequal capital ownership, unequal creditworthiness, licensing, qualification rules, or concessions block this process, surplus may persist, but it becomes monopolistic or “monopoloid” rather than pure entrepreneurial profit.

The third section follows from the residual character of the category. Because the entrepreneurial act is non-substitutable and each new disposition has its own result, there is no general rate of entrepreneurial profit, no calculable normal magnitude, and no equalization tendency except disappearance under competition.

Es besteht keine Ausgleichungstendenz für den Unternehmergewinn.

English translation: There exists no equalizing tendency for entrepreneurial profit.

Amonn’s article remains relevant because it clarifies profit without collapsing the entrepreneur into the capitalist or the manager. Its central conceptual move is to make entrepreneurial profit the temporary residual counterpart of dynamic disposition: born from economic development, appropriated by the disposer of production means, altered by institutional privilege, and extinguished where competitive imitation fully operates.