Ludwig von Mises, [Einleitende Ausführungen zur Aussprache über die Wertlehre]

Ludwig von Mises’s opening address to a discussion of value theory, originally published in 1933, is an extracted contribution to discussion proceedings; the date of the supplied republication is undocumented. Its occasion shapes its argument: Mises establishes conditions for meaningful disagreement, defines the explanatory task of economics, and defends subjective value theory against competing approaches. His central claim is that market explanation must ultimately rest on individual acts of preference. Scientific discussion should clarify the differences between theories, not reconcile their adherents through compromise.

Mises begins with two prerequisites. Following Kant, he rejects the separation of theoretically valid knowledge from practical applicability. More controversially, he insists that reasoning must have a common structure:

Wir müssen annehmen, daß die logische Struktur des menschlichen Denkens im Ablauf der Zeiten unveränderlich und für alle Rassen, Völker und Klassen gleich ist.

English translation: We must assume that the logical structure of human thought is unchanging over time and the same for all races, peoples, and classes.

This requirement targets doctrines that make conceptual thought dependent on class, historical period, or racial affiliation. Mises argues that their proponents cannot debate across these divisions without implicitly abandoning their premise. His treatment of Marxism is sharply polemical: he defines it here through the class-bound character of thought and regards participation in supposedly “bourgeois” scientific argument as inconsistent with that commitment. The methodological point is that an explanation cannot be refuted merely by identifying its author’s social position. Economics must distinguish questions of knowledge from judgments of value and will.

The same distinction governs the purpose of the meeting. Political assemblies seek agreement sufficient for common action; scientific inquiry benefits from making disagreement more exact.

Unsere Aufgabe ist nicht Handeln, sondern Erkennen; und Erkenntnis wird nur durch Klarheit und Schärfe, nie durch Kompromisse gefördert.

English translation: Our task is not action but knowledge; and knowledge is advanced only through clarity and precision, never through compromises.

Mises next defines the subject matter as the laws governing exchange ratios: prices, wages, and interest rates. He acknowledges the historical school’s denial of universal economic laws but brackets that controversy as already discussed elsewhere. The immediate question is whether price theory requires an underlying theory of value.

His answer depends on the purpose of abstraction. The isolated household and the socialist community serve as conceivable economies without interpersonal exchange, not as reconstructions of a primitive historical stage. Against Cassel, Mises explains that inquiry proceeds from the most general case to more specific institutional arrangements. Money must therefore be explained rather than assumed. Market theory, or catallactics, completes its foundational task only when it traces prices back to choice:

Nur wenn der Katallaktik diese Zurückführung auf das Allgemeinste gelingt, wenn sie die Preisbildung zurückverfolgt hat, bis zu dem Punkt, wo die Entscheidung der Handelnden fällt: ich ziehe a dem b vor, hat sie ihre Aufgabe ganz erfüllt.

English translation: Only if catallactics succeeds in this reduction to the most general case, if it has traced price formation back to the point at which the agents’ decision is made: I prefer a to b, has it fully accomplished its task.

This starting point also establishes a disciplinary boundary. Economics explains the consequences of acting, not the psychological motives behind each decision. Whether demand for weapons arises from good or evil intentions does not alter its role in price formation. Subjective value theory thus concerns preferences expressed in action, without requiring an explanation or moral appraisal of their origins.

The address’s central critical section argues that opponents frequently attack obsolete formulations rather than contemporary theory. Cassel’s objections about ambiguity and value measurement overlook distinctions and developments associated with Pareto, Cuhel, and Strigl. Mises grants that earlier presentations admitted criticism while denying that this discredits their theoretical core. Values are ranked, not measured as magnitudes.

His response to Othmar Spann’s universalism develops this point. A change in an individual’s consumption can initiate market changes; it need not presuppose a prior alteration of the economic whole. Shared motives and the aggregate scale of demand do not displace the individual choice as the explanatory starting point. Nor does subjective theory arbitrarily impose a unit of quantity:

Wir haben stets von jener Menge auszugehen, über die in der betrachteten bestimmten Wahlhandlung entschieden wird.

English translation: We must always start from the quantity about which a decision is made in the particular act of choice under consideration.

The relevant unit belongs to the concrete decision itself. Mises contrasts this identifiable act with wholes whose boundaries competing theorists perceive differently. He also separates Spann’s search for a just price from economics’ explanation of existing prices. Criticism of mathematical methods is reserved for a future, properly prepared discussion.

The concluding synthesis presents marginal utility theory as both a decisive break and an assimilation of classical achievements. Menger, Jevons, and Walras overcame the apparent antinomy of value, enabling a unified explanation beginning with individual action. Costs retain a place within this framework. Money, banking, and crises likewise cease to require separate theoretical foundations, although Mises acknowledges the classical Currency Theory’s contribution. Austrian, Lausanne, and Anglo-American approaches appear chiefly as different presentations of a shared explanatory principle.

This claim to theoretical unity does not make the meeting a tribunal empowered to canonize doctrine:

Wir werden am Ende unserer Wechselrede nicht abstimmen, wir werden unbekehrt auseinandergehen, wenn auch vielleicht nicht unbelehrt.

English translation: We shall not vote at the end of our discussion; we shall part unconverted, though perhaps not uninstructed.

Mises closes by interpreting continuing attacks on marginal utility theory as evidence of its intellectual vitality. The address’s significance lies in joining a defense of choice-based explanation to an account of scientific controversy: common reasoning makes disagreement possible, while precise disagreement can advance knowledge without producing consensus.