Alfred Amonn: Oppenheimers Theorie der „Reinen und Politischen Oekonomie“ (1928)

Alfred Amonn’s two-part study, “I. Grundlegung und allgemeine Preislehre; II. Monopoltheorie und Verteilungslehre,” critically examines Franz Oppenheimer’s economic system from its methodological foundations through price theory, monopoly, and distribution. Its governing objection is that Oppenheimer’s definitions and assumptions do not establish the causal relationships required by his conclusions. Amonn distinguishes explanations of market prices and incomes from questions about the historical origins and ethical legitimacy of property.

The first part challenges Oppenheimer’s attempt to define economics through the essential characteristics of economic conduct. His definitions move among material goods, scarcity, labor requirements, and rational action without adequately isolating the problems economic theory must explain. Ethical restrictions further complicate his criterion:

»Verfahren nach dem Prinzip des kleinsten Mittels« umfaßt nach Oppenheimer nur nach den »Imperativen der Sittlichkeit, des Rechts und der Sitte, die in einer Gesellschaft gelten,« erlaubte Handlungen ¹⁶).

English translation: "Proceeding according to the principle of the least means" comprises, according to Oppenheimer, only those actions permitted under the "imperatives of morality, law and custom which hold in a society."

For Amonn, defining conduct through conformity to prevailing norms confuses the delimitation of an explanatory science with judgments about permissible behavior. Economics requires concepts fitted to its problems, rather than deductions from ordinary language or a general classification of human activity.

The discussion of marginal utility develops this methodological criticism into a defense of contemporary value theory. Amonn argues that Oppenheimer misconstrues the Austrian account of costs by confusing expenditure with the valuation of resources through alternative uses. Forgone products do not themselves become additional expenditures; alternative opportunities explain the valuation of what is actually sacrificed. His verdict is emphatic but conditional:

Gegenüber Oppenheimers Kritik aber kann man sagen: wenn es keine anderen Einwendungen gegen die moderne Grenznutzentheorie gibt, als die in ihr vorgebrachten, dann steht sie so fest, wie eine Theorie überhaupt nur stehen kann.

English translation: As against Oppenheimer's critique, however, one may say: if there are no other objections to the modern marginal utility theory than those advanced in it, then it stands as firmly as a theory can possibly stand.

The passage captures the study’s polemical force: Oppenheimer’s objections fail, Amonn contends, because they do not accurately reconstruct the doctrine they purport to refute.

General price theory supplies a further test. Oppenheimer derives static exchange ratios from labor time by assuming that competition equalizes incomes among equally qualified producers. Amonn distinguishes equal remuneration for equivalent services from equal total incomes. Differences in effort, occupational attractions, and employment choices prevent the latter from following automatically. “Qualification” becomes circular if inferred from the income it supposedly explains. The assumption that an average worker can independently produce alternative commodities also disregards production under a developed division of labor.

The second part asks whether Oppenheimer’s expanded concept of monopoly explains property income. Amonn’s objection is not merely terminological: restricted entry, productive advantages, and class ownership must be shown to have the price effects attributed to them. The claim that large landed property creates dependent wage labor and thereby capital profit overlooks the resources required for independent production. Access to land does not itself provide tools, buildings, subsistence, or working capital. Abolishing exclusion from land therefore does not demonstrate that borrowing or interest would disappear.

Amonn also separates private appropriation from deliberate productive withholding. Ownership excludes unrestricted occupation, but this alone does not prove an artificial reduction in cultivation, output, or labor demand. Describing profits as a collective class tribute likewise fails to explain particular wages and returns. In rent theory, he recognizes differential productivity’s explanatory role while distinguishing rent per acre from the distribution of landed wealth. Feudal obligations and capitalist rent require different accounts because their institutional mechanisms differ.

Discussions of capitalization, money, crises, and population extend the charge that Oppenheimer relies on utility, scarcity, and supply and demand where his labor-value principles prove insufficient. The criticism culminates in a diagnosis of the relationship between theory and political commitment:

Einer von Oppenheimers Grundfehlern tritt hier ganz auffallend hervor, nämlich der, daß er sein Urteil viel weniger durch die Logik als durch eine bestimmte politische Einstellung bestimmen läßt.

English translation: One of Oppenheimer's fundamental errors emerges here quite strikingly, namely that he lets his judgment be determined far less by logic than by a definite political attitude.

Amonn’s sympathy with Oppenheimer’s emancipatory purpose does not entail acceptance of its theoretical foundations. His central demand is independent causal demonstration: neither the injustice of existing property relations nor the desirability of reform establishes that abolishing large estates would eliminate interest, rent, or inequality.