Alfred Amonn, Wiesers „Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft“. I–II (1925)

Amonn’s two-part critical article examines the conceptual foundations and explanatory reach of Friedrich von Wieser’s economics. Moving from the “simple economy” through utility, imputation, prices, and distribution to public finance and international exchange, it asks whether individual economic valuation can explain the institutional relations of a social economy. Amonn recognizes Wieser’s systematic ambition and sociological insight but challenges the passage from subjective utility to objective market relations.

The methodological difficulty concerns the relation between description and prescription. Wieser presents theory as an interpretation of economic experience, yet repeatedly assumes rational conduct or evaluates needs according to standards that experience alone cannot establish. Amonn consequently asks whether theory explains actual motives or specifies conduct appropriate to an economic purpose. The treatment of allegedly abnormal needs exposes this uncertainty:

Wieser meint, daß »die Wirtschaftstheorie, welche den regelmäßigen Ablauf des wirtschaftlichen Prozesses untersucht, solche Bedürfnisse außer Betracht« lassen kann.

English translation: Wieser holds that "economic theory, which investigates the regular course of the economic process, can leave such needs out of account."

For Amonn, excluding such needs risks importing ethical distinctions into descriptive analysis. A similar problem arises when Wieser’s “simple economy” shifts between an isolated individual and an ideally unified national economy. These constructions cannot be substituted without accounting for the plurality of persons and valuations that constitutes social economic life.

Man darf sicher nicht »dort vereinfachen, wo die Vielheit das Wesen ist«.

English translation: One certainly must not "simplify where multiplicity is the essence."

This methodological warning supplies a thread through the article. An abstraction becomes misleading when it removes the relations that theory must explain. Amonn therefore distinguishes the general problem of economic conduct from the special conditions of an ideal collective organization:

Das Problem der »Einschätzung künftiger Bedürfnisse« in einer »gesellschaftlichen Musterwirtschaft« ist ja doch nur ein Spezialproblem im Verhältnis zu jenem.

English translation: The problem of the "estimation of future needs" in a "model social economy" is, after all, only a special problem in relation to that one.

Amonn locates economics’ starting point in the desire to possess or command scarce things, rather than directly in the satisfaction of needs. Psychological needs can motivate acquisition without determining it necessarily; satiation therefore cannot establish a universal economic law. Economic valuation must be distinguished from its psychological origins. Similarly, reducing capital to produced means of production strips it of its specifically social significance, while reproduction does not establish capital’s supposed indestructibility.

The critique of utility calculation develops these distinctions. Equal prices do not prove equal subjective valuations, and multiplying quantities of goods does not turn intensive valuations into additive units. Amonn welcomes Wieser’s separation of physical causation from economic imputation but rejects the proposed arithmetic of utility. Business calculation uses money sums, not measurable quantities of satisfaction. At the collective level, the difficulty becomes sharper: no common utility unit has been established that would allow different individuals’ valuations to determine a single production plan.

In price theory, Amonn approves the approach through quantities supplied and demanded at different prices. He argues, however, that Wieser’s appeal to maximum bids already presupposes prices, purchasing power, and alternative expenditures. Marginal bidders and marginal production conditions cannot independently explain prices when prices help determine their position at the margin. Related circularities affect monetary and distribution theory: money incomes and imputed productive shares cannot function as independent explanations of the prices on which they depend.

Amonn accordingly treats exchange value as an objective market relation, distinct from a psychological act of valuation. An owner’s imputation of rent or interest to his own resources presupposes the market values of comparable resources. Costs, income shares, and prices must therefore be understood as interdependent, rather than derived from a prior calculus of utility.

The later discussion credits Wieser’s analyses of credit, monopoly, social conditioning, and hierarchies within the division of labor. Nevertheless, utility theory cannot by itself justify property, distinguish deserved income, or establish policy prescriptions. Collective valuation is not necessarily calculation, and national and world economies differ in the extent and strength of their connections rather than through an absolute opposition of unity and disunity. Amonn’s overall assessment thus combines appreciation of Wieser’s achievement with a sustained insistence on separating psychological valuation, monetary calculation, social relations, and ethical judgment.