Oskar Morgenstern on Vleugels’s Defence of Marginalism (1928)

Oskar Morgenstern’s brief book review assesses Wilhelm Vleugels’s response to Franz Oppenheimer’s challenge to marginal utility theory. Oppenheimer had sought to revive and reformulate an objective theory of value within a system encompassing sociology, political science, and economics. Morgenstern acknowledges the breadth and brilliance of that undertaking, but treats its prominence as a reason for rigorous criticism, not evidence of theoretical success.

The review presents Vleugels’s book as addressing both Oppenheimer’s attack on the Austrian school and his proposed alternative:

The author deals with Oppenheimer's critique of the Austrian school and tries to show that these criticisms, as well as Oppenheimer's own positive solution, can be adequately dealt with, and that without great difficulties.

Vleugels draws on Böhm-Bawerk and Wieser to refute Oppenheimer’s theses successively. Morgenstern’s endorsement nevertheless extends beyond allegiance to the Austrian school: he explicitly allows that modern theory need not take its particular Austrian form. The decisive criterion is explanatory adequacy to empirical economic phenomena, on which he judges modern theory superior to Oppenheimer’s constructions. The short review reports this verdict without reproducing the underlying technical arguments.

Its closing assessment connects theoretical criticism with scholarly fairness:

Furthermore, this book is a sample of just how a scientific discussion should be developed, doing full justice to the counterpart.

For Morgenstern, Vleugels’s achievement is therefore methodological as well as substantive: systematic refutation remains compatible with fair treatment of an opponent. His final praise of the book’s writing recommends it to serious students of economic theory.