Oskar Morgenstern, Friedrich von Wieser, 1851–1926 (1927)

Oskar Morgenstern’s obituary presents Wieser as a founder of Austrian economics whose theoretical work belonged to a lifelong inquiry into history, power, and social organization. Moving from intellectual formation and public service through the major economic writings to the final sociological synthesis, it makes originality and systematic thought the unifying characteristics of his career. The commemorative judgment extends beyond economics: Wieser’s death also marks the disappearance of a cultivated Austrian intellectual whose combination of scholarship, political responsibility, and aristocratic urbanity had become historical with the dissolution of the monarchy.

Morgenstern traces Wieser’s analytical discipline partly to his legal education, especially Roman law. His early attraction to history nevertheless remained fundamental: historical inquiry promised an understanding of social phenomena that jurisprudence alone could not provide. Dissatisfied with the economics taught in Vienna, Wieser and Böhm-Bawerk found their intellectual starting point in Menger’s Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre. Subsequent study with German historical economists did not displace their commitment to theory. Morgenstern distinguishes Wieser’s concern for systematic analysis from an interest in explicit methodological controversy, about which he wrote comparatively little.

The account of Wieser’s academic appointments leads into his political activities, including service as minister of commerce in the final imperial cabinets. Morgenstern treats these responsibilities as evidence against the supposed remoteness of Austrian theory from practical affairs:

This "personal-union" of theorists and practical men should refute the notion that theory in general, and perhaps Austrian economic theory in particular, must necessarily be unreal.

This defense of theory’s relevance frames the survey of Wieser’s economic contributions. In the 1884 work on economic value, Wieser introduced the term “Grenznutzen,” clearly formulated the problem of imputation, and thereby supplied a new basis for distribution theory. More importantly for Morgenstern’s assessment of his independence, he reinterpreted the classical law of costs through marginal utility, addressing a problem Menger had left unresolved. Natural Value further developed imputation and the cost concept, with conclusions differing from those of both Menger and Böhm-Bawerk. The Austrian school thus appears as a shared intellectual project containing substantive disagreements, not merely the transmission of a founder’s doctrine.

The obituary’s theoretical center is the 1914 Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft, which Morgenstern regards as the fullest systematic Austrian treatment of marginal utility. Its decisive distinction separates the “simple economy” from the exchange or “social economy.” The first establishes relationships between wants and available commodities under a single directing will:

Whether the subject of this formal system be a single individual or a large communistic society does not matter; Wieser uses the latter example.

The organizing principle is therefore unity of valuation and control, rather than the number of people involved. Utility, production, and imputation are developed within this framework before the analysis turns to exchange and prices. Morgenstern identifies this movement from simple to social economy as characteristically Austrian, while acknowledging disagreement over the precise connection between the two stages, particularly in distribution theory.

Wieser’s price analysis then connects household demand with the physical relationships among productive resources. His account of the “stratification of prices” matters because it links formal theory to a sociological picture of actual economic processes. Marginal utility also extends to money; later parts treat the state and international economic relations, although Morgenstern places the work’s principal achievement in its first two parts. Publication near the outbreak of war delayed its reception. The second edition’s reception suggests renewed attention, but the obituary locates the work’s continuing fertility partly in its acknowledged incompleteness:

His attitude never was dogmatic; he always welcomed criticism, which distinguished him from the leaders of many another school of thought.

Here commemoration becomes an argument about scientific legacy. Wieser’s openness to correction, rather than the establishment of a closed doctrine, makes his synthesis capable of stimulating further investigation.

The final substantial section returns to the historical and sociological interests with which Wieser began. Earlier writings on constitutional development, law, power, and Austria’s collapse culminate in Das Gesetz der Macht (1926). Morgenstern interprets this culmination as the attainment, through the circuitous route of economic theory, of Wieser’s original ambition to understand social history. He summarizes its investigations of leaders and masses, decreasing force, and the rule of smaller numbers over larger ones, while cautiously declining to predict its ultimate influence.

By "Macht" Wieser does not mean mere external force but the power of ideas manifesting itself in various ways.

Power consequently has a developmental history: compulsion gives way to law and then to an internally grounded validity of power. Morgenstern connects Wieser’s belief in this progression with his pacifism. The closing portrait brings intellectual and personal originality together. Wieser’s achievements express an insistence on mastering and reformulating ideas for himself; his influence also operated through teaching, friendship, and an unusually comprehensive culture. The obituary’s lasting relevance lies in this integrated account of Austrian economics as systematic theory embedded in political experience and a broader philosophy of society.