Alfred Amonn, L. Walras, Theorie des Geldes. Replik (1923–1924)

Alfred Amonn’s brief journal reply answers Kerschagl’s defence of the German translation of Walras’s Theorie des Geldes, published jointly with Stephan Raditz. Its subject is the responsibility attached to presenting a translation and introductory account as scholarly work. Amonn argues that Kerschagl has selected minor remarks from his earlier review while leaving its central criticisms unanswered: the quality of the translation and the equally careless treatment of doctrinal history in the introduction. The reply proceeds from editorial accountability, through examples of conceptual imprecision, to a forceful statement of the standards owed to specialist readers.

Kerschagl’s defence, as Amonn reports it, rests partly on a division of labour: he wrote the introduction to a translation already completed by his colleague. Amonn rejects this as irrelevant to the responsibility incurred through publication. Making a translation privately and issuing it publicly as scholarship are distinct acts; the latter obliges everyone named as an editor to answer for its quality.

Und die Verantwortung dafür kommt zweifellos jedem der Herausgeber in gleicher Weise zu.

English translation: And responsibility for this undoubtedly rests equally with each of the editors.

This principle gives the reply its argumentative centre. Kerschagl’s assertion that he had read the translation and knew the French original creates, for Amonn, an uncomfortable alternative: either he recognized the defects and nevertheless authorized publication, or he failed to recognize them, calling both his linguistic competence and his understanding of Walras into question. Amonn further invokes the editors’ own preface, which described the work as jointly accomplished and denied that serious scholarship could consist of disconnected contributions. He reads that declaration as implying, at minimum, that the translation had been checked and corrected. A division of tasks cannot cancel a public claim of collaboration.

The second movement returns to the expressions Kerschagl had attempted to clarify. Amonn maintains that these explanations still leave him unable to understand formulations concerning metallic parity, bimetallism, and exodromic policy. He allows, with pointed modesty, that his own difficulty in following an unclear style might contribute to the problem. Yet his objections are specific: he questions what it means for bimetallism to promise metallic parity, and distinguishes stabilization as a goal of policy from policy as an object of stabilization. The issue is whether the wording establishes intelligible relations between concepts.

Die Stabilisierung kann meiner Auffassung nach wohl der Inhalt des Problems sein, aber nicht dessen »Bedeutung« (es kann die Frage der Stabilisierung bedeuten, d. h. darstellen.)

English translation: In my view, stabilization can indeed be the content of the problem, but not its “meaning” (it can mean, i.e. represent, the question of stabilization.)

This distinction exemplifies Amonn’s method: he tests abstract terminology by asking what each expression can coherently designate. A problem may concern stabilization, but that does not make stabilization its meaning. Similarly, a policy can possess stability without becoming the object of stabilization in the sense under discussion. Such distinctions underpin his insistence that the dispute concerns intelligibility rather than verbal elegance.

The conclusion explicitly refuses Kerschagl’s apparent framing of the criticism as a demand for stylistic beauty:

Zum Schluß möchte ich bemerken, daß es sich bei dem allen nicht um »stilistische Schönheit« — wie es Kerschagl aufzufassen scheint —, sondern um grammatikalische Richtigkeit und Verständlichkeit des Ausdrucks und, was meine Besprechung überhaupt anbelangt, gar nicht um eine »wissenschaftliche Polemik« handelt, sondern um eine bloße Zurückweisung anmaßendster pseudowissenschaftlicher Belästigung des Fachpublikums, eine Zurückweisung, die meiner Ansicht nach gar nicht scharf genug sein kann.

English translation: In conclusion, I would like to remark that all this is not about “stylistic beauty”—as Kerschagl seems to understand it—but about grammatical correctness and intelligibility of expression; and, as regards my review as a whole, it is not about a “scholarly polemic” at all, but simply about rejecting the most presumptuous pseudoscientific harassment of the specialist readership, a rejection which, in my opinion, cannot be sharp enough.

The severity of this verdict is integral to the reply. Amonn treats linguistic competence, conceptual clarity, and shared editorial responsibility as conditions of scholarly legitimacy. His closing claim that Kerschagl’s contribution offers nothing meaningful explains why he regards substantive criticism as unavailable. The piece’s relevance lies chiefly in this defence of publication standards: it does not develop Walras’s monetary theory, but contests the authority of a publication claiming to convey it.