Hans Mayer, Konsumtion (1923)

Hans Mayer’s encyclopedia entry develops a theory of consumption through five sections: its definition, its place in the economic process, its distribution, its measurement, and consumption policy. Its organizing distinction is between satisfying needs and consuming goods. Consumption means the depletion of goods accompanying immediate satisfaction, not satisfaction itself, expenditure, or household management. This restriction grounds Mayer’s central argument: consumption necessitates recurrent production, while available productive resources limit its extent.

Mayer begins by separating processes that everyday usage and economic writing often conflate. Production uses up inputs but replaces them with other goods; consumption diminishes the stock available to the economy. Satisfaction need not destroy its object, and household management concerns the planning of uses rather than consumption itself. Money income likewise finances capital formation and the acquisition of nonconsumable goods as well as consumption.

Die Beschränkung des Begriffes Konsumtion auf den Güterverbrauch bei der unmittelbaren Bedürfnisbefriedigung entspricht daher allein der Zweckmäßigkeit bei der Abgrenzung der wirtschaftlichen Grundbegriffe.

English translation: Restricting the concept of consumption to the using up of goods in the immediate satisfaction of needs is therefore the only approach consistent with expediency in delimiting the fundamental economic concepts.

This definition includes durable goods insofar as repeated use eventually consumes them, but excludes personal services: artistic performances and domestic service involve using, not destroying, another person’s labour power. The distinction also separates consumption’s direct economic effects from the physiological and cultural consequences of satisfying needs.

The substantial second section explains consumption through needs and productive possibilities. The number, capacity, and recurrence of needs establish an economy’s potential consumption. Existing output limits what can be consumed at a particular moment, but production is not an independent ultimate determinant: it responds to the satisfaction sought. Mayer therefore traces the underlying constraints to the quantities of material and human productive resources and the proportions in which complementary inputs are available. Property relations, social power, working-time restrictions, and technology condition their use.

In an enterprise economy, profitability governs how far these resources are employed. Production expands until the price of the marginal product equals its production costs. Demand depends on needs and incomes, but Mayer treats incomes, at the aggregate explanatory level, as themselves ultimately dependent on productive contributions. His final determinants are thus needs, total productive resources, and their complementary proportions. At household level, by contrast, income and consumer prices remain immediate constraints. This distinction connects individual choice with the economy’s material capacity without simply treating current output as fixed.

Die Produktion steht demnach vollständig im Dienste der Konsumtion.

English translation: Production therefore stands entirely in the service of consumption.

The claim concerns replacement rather than an injunction to spend. Depletion makes renewed production necessary if satisfaction is to continue. Mayer sharpens the point through a counterfactual: if all needs could be satisfied with indestructible goods, a stationary economy would require no production, while a growing economy would produce only for new or altered needs. Consumption, rather than needs alone, explains recurrent production. Meanwhile, nutrition, health, and cultural development affect future production through labour capacity and changing needs, though these are properly effects of satisfaction.

Sustainable consumption requires reserving output for capital replacement and, in a growing economy, capital formation. Prices ordinarily reconcile modest discrepancies between production and consumption; substantial errors can produce crises. Mayer defines overproduction relative to demand at prices covering costs, not to the absence of unsatisfied needs. Overconsumption occurs when foreign credit finances current consumption or when consumer-goods production leaves insufficient resources for capital replacement.

In beiden Fällen erfolgt die gegenwärtige Konsumtion auf Kosten der zukünftigen.

English translation: In both cases, present consumption takes place at the expense of future consumption.

Foreign debt burdens later output, while inadequate replacement consumes the foundations of production. Mayer gives particular attention to wartime demand financed by paper-money issuance: increased monetary incomes coexist with the diversion of productive resources, encouraging consumer-goods production at the expense of capital maintenance.

The distribution section complicates any simple identification of consumption with need. Households choose combinations of goods under diminishing increments of satisfaction, constrained by income and prices. Aggregate consumption patterns consequently cannot reveal the relative urgency of the population’s needs. Purchasing power enables less urgent demands among wealthy households to command resources that might satisfy more urgent needs elsewhere. Consumption statistics provide evidence about provisioning and price formation, but interpreting them requires attention to scarcity and income inequality.

Measurement introduces a related limitation: heterogeneous goods cannot simply be added into a meaningful total. Physical comparisons work within individual categories, while mixed changes across categories prevent an unambiguous aggregate comparison.

Für den Konsum einer Volkswirtschaft als Ganzes wäre aber ein objektives Maß nötig.

English translation: For the consumption of a national economy as a whole, however, an objective measure would be necessary.

Mayer finds nutritional measures too narrow and monetary totals sensitive to changing prices. He considers conditional constant-price comparisons, importance weights based on a representative household, and comparisons of productive resources devoted to consumption, without presenting a definitive solution.

The final section organizes policy around total consumption, its composition, and social groups’ shares. Instruments include rationing, production measures, price regulation, trade restrictions, taxation, and interventions in income formation. Their purposes range from protecting future productive capacity to improving provisioning and discouraging harmful consumption. The entry’s lasting conceptual interest lies in its combination of marginal analysis with material reproduction: consumption responds to individual valuations, yet its sustainability, distribution, and significance for welfare cannot be understood from expenditure or observed demand alone.