Johann von Komorzynski, “Ist auf Grundlage der bisherigen wissenschaftlichen Forschung die Bestimmung der natürlichen Höhe der Güterpreise möglich?” — Summary

Komorzynski’s 1869 essay is a critical inquiry into whether political economy can determine the “natural” height of prices: not transient market quotations, but the law-governed price relations toward which exchange is presumed to tend. His answer is explicitly negative.

Wir werden demnach zu dem Ergebnisse gelangen, dass auf Grundlage der heutigen Forschung die wissenschaftliche Begründung der natürlichen Preisverhältnisse der Güter eine Unmöglichkeit ist.

English translation: We shall accordingly reach the conclusion that, on the basis of present-day research, the scientific grounding of the natural price relations of goods is an impossibility.

The essay begins from a premise shared by the traditions it criticizes: prices are not pure accident. Goods stand in determinate numerical relations to one another, and scientific economics must explain those relations rather than merely describe bargaining outcomes.

Offenbar stehen die Preise aller Güter unter einander in gewissen ziffermässigen Verhältnissen.

English translation: Evidently the prices of all goods stand to one another in certain numerical ratios.

Komorzynski first examines the English labour theory of value, especially Smith, Ricardo, M’Culloch, Malthus, and Mill. Its attraction is its apparent simplicity: if commodities exchange according to the labour embodied in them, then price relations can be expressed in a clear quantitative form.

Preise aller Güter würden durch die Menge der auf die Hervorbringung derselben gewandten Arbeit begründet.

English translation: The prices of all goods would be grounded in the quantity of labor expended upon their production.

But this formula breaks down once production is treated realistically. Labour cannot explain differences arising from the duration of capital advances, rates of profit, rent, and the varying temporal structure of production. Komorzynski also objects that “labour” itself is conceptually ambiguous: value-producing labour is not merely bodily exertion measurable in hours, but purposive activity organized through capital, knowledge, and social demand. Thus the English theory mistakes an abstract simplifying device for a genuine determinant of price.

The second part turns to German and French cost-of-production theories, including Hermann, Rau, Roscher, Say, Rossi, and others. Komorzynski grants that these writers often identify real constraints: the buyer’s use-value, the seller’s cost, alternative opportunities, and upper or lower limits of exchange. Yet a scientific law of natural price must determine a point, not merely a range. A theory that says price lies between utility to the buyer and cost to the seller has characterized the field of negotiation, but has not solved the problem.

Offenbar nun enthält diese Methode, den Preis innerhalb gewisser Maximal- und Minimalgrenzen einzuschliessen, bloss eine gewisse Charakterisierung der Preishöhe, nicht jedoch schon eine Lösung unseres Problems.

English translation: Clearly, this method of enclosing the price within certain maximum and minimum limits contains merely a certain characterization of the price level, and not yet a solution of our problem.

The same criticism applies to the doctrine that natural price equals cost of production. Costs are themselves prices: wages, raw materials, capital services, land-rent, and interest must already be valued before they can explain the value of the finished good. Unless all prices can be derived simultaneously from non-price elements, the theory is circular. Komorzynski therefore anticipates a systems problem in price theory: every good is connected with every other through production, consumption, substitution, capital use, and time.

This interdependence becomes especially troublesome in cases of profit and rent. The rate of capital return cannot be calculated without prices, yet prices are supposed to be explained partly by that return. Ricardo’s rent theory also fails to yield determinate price relations, because identifying the marginal conditions of cultivation requires prior valuation of transport, capital, and product. Joint production creates another obstacle: where one process yields several goods—such as wool and mutton, gas and coke, or flour and bran—common costs do not determine the separate prices of the resulting products.

The final section considers utility and use-value theories. Komorzynski accepts that value must ultimately relate to human welfare, but he denies that utility supplies a measurable unit from which prices can be deduced. Needs differ in intensity, social rank, substitutability, and dependence on the whole economic system. A good’s usefulness is not a simple physical magnitude, and therefore cannot by itself generate exact numerical price ratios.

The essay’s significance lies in its rigorous pre-marginal critique of classical value theory. Komorzynski offers no replacement formula; instead, he shows why labour, cost, rent, profit, and utility theories all fail to determine natural prices with scientific exactness. Its lasting force is methodological: any adequate price theory must confront circularity, simultaneity, capital time, joint production, and the non-measurability of utility.