Alfred Amonn’s journal article reconsiders interest theory in response to Keynes’s attempt to explain interest as a purely monetary phenomenon. Its German argument moves from definitions of interest and capital through the causes and determination of interest to disputes over stationary economies and monetary explanation; concluding summaries in Italian, English, French, and Spanish recapitulate it. Amonn’s central contention is that interest arises from the scarcity of present command over economic goods. Monetary conditions influence its rate, especially during economic change, but cannot replace this underlying explanation.
The initial conceptual revision concerns interest as a value rather than simply a price paid for borrowing. A borrower purchases temporary command over goods through money, while an owner employing personal capital can obtain an equivalent advantage without paying a loan price. Interest may therefore appear either as an explicit payment or as the difference between sales revenue and technical production costs, including depreciation and imputed remuneration for the owner’s labour and land. The distinction between productive and consumption interest is more satisfactory than a universal division between “original” and “derived” interest: consumption loans need not derive their interest from a productive return.
This broader definition requires separating capital as a distributive category from produced means of production. What matters is purchasing power over goods, not their physical identity:
Man wird dem ganzen Sachverhalt am besten dadurch gerecht, wenn man das «Kapital» definiert als «konzentrierte, abstrakte Verfügungsmacht über wirtschaftliche Güter im tauschwirtschaftlichen Verkehr».
English translation: The whole state of affairs is best accounted for by defining “capital” as “concentrated, abstract power of disposal over economic goods in exchange transactions.”
“Concentrated” distinguishes accumulated command at a moment from income’s continuing flow; “abstract” identifies transferable value rather than particular objects. Money becomes capital when assigned to purposes other than purchasing goods for the owner’s own consumption. A building’s capital value can change while its physical properties remain unchanged. Consequently, capital use cannot mean merely technical employment or wear: it means realizing an advantage through command over goods in exchange. This distinction allows use theory and the theory of a premium on present over future goods to be reconciled conceptually, without establishing that either provides a sufficient explanation.
Amonn next separates two questions: why interest exists, and how its rate is determined. Neither its historical ubiquity nor the invocation of abstinence, waiting, or subjective sacrifice proves pure interest necessary. Much capital comes from income exceeding desired consumption; even where sacrifice occurs, security or another benefit may compensate it. Observed loan charges also include administration, intermediation, and risk, which must not be confused with capital use itself:
Wir können sagen: der Bruttozins ist eine notwendige Grösse, der Nettozins oder « reine » oder « eigentliche » Zins nicht.
English translation: We can say: gross interest is a necessary magnitude, but net interest, or “pure” or “interest proper,” is not.
Pure interest requires actual scarcity, not an intrinsic cost attaching to capital. Technical productivity alone is insufficient: additional capital may enable qualitatively different products rather than merely larger quantities, and even value productivity does not establish scarcity. Unlike land, capital can accumulate. Amonn therefore treats a declining rate, and potentially the disappearance of pure interest, as conceivable rather than theoretically excluded.
Rate determination becomes a problem of derived demand. Entrepreneurs cannot decide their demand for capital use from interest rates alone; they must anticipate product prices and saleable quantities. Amonn links capital demand to consumer demand through the price differences needed to cover different quantities and durations of investment. Equilibrium interest imposes a capital charge that restricts demand for capital-intensive products to the quantities producible with available capital use. “Capital products” is thus a relative category: products differ according to the capital required to make them.
Against Schumpeter, Amonn distinguishes reproducible capital goods from presently available command over them:
Die Nachfrage nach Kapitalnutzung kann dem Angebot an solcher stets vorausseilen.
English translation: Demand for capital use can always run ahead of its supply.
His extended treatment of Roscher’s fishermen traces the transition from innovation profit to a stable return on scarce capital. Boats and nets may become generally available, eliminating pure interest while leaving replacement costs intact. Alternatively, unequal capacities or willingness to accumulate can preserve scarcity even after innovation ceases. Lending then makes the return visible as an exchange price. The example also permits negative pure interest when use prevents deterioration more costly than wear. A stationary economy without interest is possible, but stationarity does not itself require interest to vanish.
The final section integrates monetary influences without giving them exclusive explanatory authority:
Heute erkennen wir immer mehr, dass beide Aspekte für sich allein unzureichend sind und irgendwie miteinander kombiniert werden müssen, um zu einer vollständigen und befriedigenden Erklärung des Zinsphänomens zu gelangen.
English translation: Today we increasingly recognize that both aspects are insufficient on their own and must somehow be combined to arrive at a complete and satisfactory explanation of the interest phenomenon.
Capital-market demand is immediately demand for money, but its purchasing-power requirements depend on goods prices. Comparatively statically, more money capital raises those prices and the money required to obtain real capital, leaving interest unchanged. During adjustment, however, monetary expansion can lower rates before prices respond; lasting effects may follow if production of capital goods expands. Liquidity preference adds an independently monetary influence, especially through changing uncertainty. Amonn’s contribution is therefore a layered explanation: money-capital supply and demand determine the market rate, their determinants require monetary and real analysis, and scarce real command over goods sustains interest even without liquidity preference.
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