Alfred Amonn, Franz Oppenheimers „Neubegründung der objektiven Wertlehre“ (1924)

Amonn’s critical article examines Franz Oppenheimer’s attempt in Wert und Kapitalprofit to reconstruct objective value theory through the competitive equalization of incomes. Moving from classical theory to causal explanation and price equations, Amonn argues that this reconstruction neither escapes circularity nor establishes prices’ independence from subjective valuations. His central concern is the difference between explaining economic magnitudes and restating their interdependence.

The opening distinguishes classical positions on labor and production costs rather than treating them as a uniform doctrine:

Adam Smith hat diese Auffassung ausdrücklich nur für den Urzustand der Gesellschaft vertreten, das heißt, für einen Zustand, in welchem es noch weder Bodeneigentum noch Kapital gibt.

English translation: Adam Smith expressly maintained this view only for the original state of society, that is, for a state in which there is as yet neither landed property nor capital.

Heterogeneous labor and productive resources cannot immediately supply a homogeneous measure of value; replacing them with their prices risks presupposing what requires explanation. Yet Amonn qualifies the familiar accusation against classical production-cost theory:

Die Klassiker haben das wahrscheinlich nicht so gemeint — Ricardo gewiß nicht — und deshalb ist es nicht ganz richtig, wenn man sagt, die Produktionskostentheorie der Klassiker verlaufe in einem Zirkel.

English translation: The classical economists probably did not mean it so — Ricardo certainly not — and therefore it is not quite correct to say that the classical economists' cost-of-production theory runs in a circle.

Amonn welcomes renewed engagement with classical foundations but rejects Oppenheimer’s separation of the causes of value’s existence from those determining its magnitude. Value and its magnitude are not independently existing objects of explanation. Oppenheimer’s analogy between snowfall and accumulated snow does not establish causal independence: snowfall, terrain, and wind jointly determine both the presence and depth of snow. Likewise, admitting subjective conditions of value cannot justify excluding them from the explanation of its magnitude.

The next objection concerns income equalization as competition’s supposedly fundamental tendency. Equally capable people need not obtain equal incomes, since disagreeable occupations may require higher remuneration. The meaning of qualification therefore matters:

Man kann „Qualifikation“ sowohl im objektiven wie im subjektiven Sinn verstehen, im objektiven Sinn als Qualifikation der Leistung und im subjektiven Sinn als Qualifikation der Wirtschaftspersonen.

English translation: One can understand "qualification" in both an objective and a subjective sense: in the objective sense as the qualification of the performance, and in the subjective sense as the qualification of the economic persons.

Oppenheimer’s argument shifts between these senses. If equal incomes presuppose equal exertion and equivalent performances, income equalization becomes derivative of equal prices for equal services. Amonn’s explanatory priority of price does not imply that people maximize unit prices regardless of output or effort. Rather, occupational and investment choices compare returns on comparable performances or resources; income totals alone cannot explain them.

Provisionally granting Oppenheimer’s premises, Amonn tests his equations. From (e=vn-sn), Oppenheimer derives (v=(E\pm q\pm m)/n+s), introducing normal income and adjustments for qualification and monopoly. Equalization, however, would not make normal income an independently given determinant. Income depends on prices, output, and costs; costs contain prices, and productivity cannot simply be assumed independent of price incentives. The equations thus retain the unknown they are meant to explain.

Oppenheimer’s treatment of income as a mass of use-values leads Amonn to distinguish monetary income, physical consumption goods, and their subjective value. These are not interchangeable terms in a price equation. Subjective valuations cannot simply be treated as commensurable with exchange values, while heterogeneous physical bundles require a common measure. Expressing them in money restores dependence on prices. Nor does consumption eliminate exchangeability: an object retained for personal use may still be sold. The absence of switching between attainable bundles also establishes no interpersonal equality of subjective satisfaction.

Amonn then examines Oppenheimer’s societies of equals and unequals. Equal diligence need not imply equal working hours where occupations differ in difficulty. Among unequal producers, the theory leaves unclear whether normal income belongs to average or marginal producers and how product-quality differences enter price determination. Substituting labor’s value for labor time invokes scarcity and desire, bringing subjective determinants back into the account.

Finally, Amonn challenges the inference from stable equilibrium prices to independence from demand. Where production adjusts fully, its response can conceal rather than abolish causal dependence on preferences. Excluding unique goods, new products, or isolated markets cannot establish a general price theory: special cases require explanations consistent with the same underlying principles. The article’s methodological demand is to preserve conceptual distinctions, identify genuinely explanatory determinants, and distinguish equilibrium regularities from the processes producing them.