Alfred Amonn, Der Gutsbegriff in der theoretischen Nationalökonomie (1910)

Amonn’s methodological article investigates why disputes over the economic “good” fail to yield a satisfactory foundational concept. Instead of offering another definition based on usefulness, materiality, or scarcity, he asks how concepts acquire significance from the problems of theoretical economics. His opening identifies the conventional approach:

In sogenannten „Grundlegungen“ der Nationalökonomie nimmt man regelmäßig Anlaß, ausdrücklich und hauptsächlich von „Grundbegriffen“ zu reden und als einen der gründlichsten von diesen „Grundbegriffen“ pflegt man den Gutsbegriff abzuhandeln¹).

English translation: In so-called "foundations" of political economy one regularly takes occasion to speak expressly and chiefly of "fundamental concepts," and as one of the most fundamental of these "fundamental concepts" it is customary to treat the concept of goods.

The target is not conceptual clarification itself, but the assumption that ordinary vocabulary already identifies the proper object of a science. Foundational concepts must connect economics’ formal object with its substantive explanatory problems. Amonn understands theoretical economics, as developed since Ricardo, through price problems broadly conceived. These presuppose social relations whose general form is established by a social order, while individuals determine particular transactions. Defining a “good” independently of those relations risks substituting linguistic classification for economic explanation.

The same difficulty affects attempts to define economics through “economizing.” The term applies too widely to isolate what economic theory explains:

Ja, von welchen Dingen läßt sich nicht in irgend einem Sinne sagen, daß mit ihnen „gewirtschaftet“ oder „wirtschaftlich“ verfahren wird²)?

English translation: Indeed, of what things can it not be said in some sense that they are "economized with" or dealt with "economically"?

Amonn’s criticism thus concerns both the definition of the good and the prior specification of economics’ object. Neither the everyday meaning of Gut nor economical conduct in general establishes the boundaries of a distinct theoretical inquiry.

A substantial part of the argument examines the restriction of goods to material things. Against Philippovich, Dietzel, Wieser, and Sax, Amonn maintains that services and material goods share the properties relevant to price theory. Producibility and storability neither consistently distinguish them nor explain their theoretical significance. Production as technical transformation must also be distinguished from rational economizing:

Damit die Produktion „wirtschaftlichen“ Charakter erlangt, muß ihre Betrachtung unter den Gesichtspunkt des sogenannten „wirtschaftlichen“ Prinzips gestellt werden.

English translation: In order for production to acquire an "economic" character, its consideration must be placed under the point of view of the so-called "economic" principle.

Even this economic aspect of production does not supply the social relations investigated by price theory. An isolated household can produce and economize without exchanging. Likewise, the distinction between means and ends cannot justify excluding services: both services and things may satisfy needs directly or serve as intermediate means. Labor’s personal and ethical character matters for social policy, but does not eliminate its formal comparability with material objects in price analysis.

Menger and Böhm-Bawerk receive a different criticism. Their conception of goods as recognized, controllable means of satisfying needs is coherent, yet does not establish a specifically social object. Adding scarcity does not resolve the difficulty. Usefulness and quantitative insufficiency fail to coincide consistently with the objects of economic problems; scarcity also depends on spatial and temporal boundaries. The decisive question is how a social order makes something an object of exchange.

Amonn accordingly reconstructs the relevant category around individualistic exchange relations. Its formal meaning can remain fixed while its empirical extension changes historically. Persons, labor services, rights, commercial relationships, and paid abstentions occupy different positions under different social arrangements. The operative order cannot simply be equated with positive law, since actual transactions and dependencies may exist without legal authorization.

The culminating distinction separates physical control, socially protected control, and the socially recognized power to transfer control. Economic exchange concerns the last: strictly understood, it transfers powers of disposal rather than physical things. Ownership makes ordinary talk of exchanging things convenient, whereas partial use rights, claims, patents, and inheritance expectations reveal the relational structure more clearly. Rights need not constitute additional useful goods to count as independent exchange objects. Commercial connections can command prices even when their anticipated benefits remain uncertain or never materialize.

Amonn allows economists to retain the word “good,” provided inherited associations no longer determine its scientific content. What unifies the relevant objects is neither material constitution nor direct contribution to welfare, but their position within socially organized relations of disposal and exchange. His methodological conclusion is that foundational categories must follow the problems economic theory seeks to explain.