This file is a single theoretical essay: an unpublished youth work of 1876 printed in Wieser’s 1929 Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Its scope is abstract value theory. In five sections it asks how the “Kosten” of higher-order goods relate to the value of lower-order products, moving from an isolated producer to continuing reproduction, change, exchange, monopoly, and a final methodological conclusion.
Wieser begins with one economizing subject, one scarce productive good, and several consumption goods requiring different input quantities. The agent allocates the scarce input so as to obtain the greatest possible satisfaction. The numerical schema makes product values seem proportional to inputs, but Wieser denies that costs are an independent source of value. Needs matter first; goods receive value only when scarcity makes satisfactions depend on them.
Der ganze Inhalt unserer Wertvorstellung wird darum aus dem Bedürfnisleben entnommen, aber daß und wieviel daraus entnommen wurde, ist die Wirkung eines in den Gütern liegenden Momentes.
English translation: The entire content of our conception of value is thus drawn from the life of needs; but the fact that anything, and how much, has been drawn from it is the effect of a factor residing in the goods themselves.
This yields his distinction between actual use and economically indicated use. A good may be wasted or used below its value, yet the valuation was not thereby false, because value concerns the best use prescribed by the known economic situation.
Der Wert der Güter ist nicht bestimmt durch ihren wirklichen, sondern durch ihren, soweit unsere Erkenntnis reicht, wirtschaftlich gebotenen Gebrauch.
English translation: The value of goods is determined not by their actual use, but by the use which, so far as our knowledge extends, is economically enjoined.
Applied to production, this is the theory of imputation. The value of a productive good is derived from the expected value of the best products still economically obtainable from it, especially the marginal product. The product’s value itself remains grounded in wants. If product value and productive cost coincide, this is not direct transmission from input to output, but the result of production being arranged to realize the value already imputed to the productive means.
Der Wert des Produktes ist darum völlig selbständig vom Werte des Produktivgutes, und wenn wir eine Uebereinstimmung zwischen beiden wahrnehmen, so kann sie nicht daher rühren, daß der Wert des Gutes höherer Ordnung auf das Gut niederer Ordnung übertragen wurde.
English translation: The value of the product is therefore entirely independent of the value of the productive good, and if we perceive an agreement between the two, it cannot arise from the value of the good of higher order having been transferred to the good of lower order.
Section II replaces one-time production with ongoing production and consumption. Stocks of consumption goods coexist with productive goods, so reproduction becomes possible. If a product is lost, the relevant loss may not be the immediate enjoyment it would have yielded; it may be the lesser satisfaction sacrificed when productive resources are diverted to replace it. Wieser thus generalizes costs into opportunity costs within a system of alternative products. A good’s value may be fixed by a marginal need outside its own category, connected only through the common productive good.
Section III adds change. Since value is a relation between goods and needs, no valuation is permanent. Changes in quantities, wants, quality, or technique alter expected product values and therefore the imputed value of productive goods. Production expands where expected product value exceeds productive cost and contracts where it falls short. Old stocks are revalued by present conditions, not by historical expenditure.
Section IV turns briefly to exchange. The isolated agent’s single consciousness is replaced by many producers, consumers, valuations, and a price good. Production for exchange seeks the greatest price receipts because these mediate later satisfactions. Under regular competition and reproduction, prices may correspond to productive costs, but price is not value itself; monopoly can break the proportionality by restricting supply. For consumers, purchase price can function as replacement cost, yet market price still rests on valuations.
The conclusion states the essay’s decisive anti-cost-theory point. Costs do regulate production and therefore often appear to regulate product value, but they are not the final ground of value. What endures is the striving to use productive goods advantageously, correcting production until products realize the value imputed to their means.
Wenn man darum eine Regel über den Wert von Produkten im Verhältnisse zu den Produktivgütern aussprechen will, so lautet sie nicht: »Es ist«, sondern »Es soll sein«, und sie kann Geltung nur insoweit beanspruchen, als die Voraussetzungen, unter denen sie gemacht wurde, zutreffen und fortdauern.
English translation: If, therefore, one wishes to state a rule regarding the value of products in relation to productive goods, it reads not "it is" but "it ought to be," and it can claim validity only insofar as the presuppositions under which it was framed hold true and continue to hold.
The work is relevant as an early Austrian account of imputation and opportunity cost. It explains why cost seems powerful in organized production while showing that cost is derivative from expected marginal value, scarcity, foresight, and alternative uses.
This work was divided into 5 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
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