Alfred Amonn, Robert Liefmann als nationalökonomischer Schriftsteller (1920)

Alfred Amonn’s German-language polemical article answers Robert Liefmann’s defense against his earlier criticisms of Liefmann’s economic theory. It contests both the coherence of Liefmann’s concepts and his claims to originality. Amonn frames the dispute as a question of scholarly standards: theoretical innovation requires stable distinctions, logically compatible propositions, and accurate representations of predecessors. His dismissive assessment of Liefmann’s replies establishes the article’s combative tone:

Wer sie durchgeht, findet Vielerlei aber nicht viel, multa non multum.

English translation: Whoever goes through them finds many things but not much, multa non multum.

The argument nevertheless rests on particular conceptual and textual disputes. Amonn distinguishes harmless variation in terminology from changes in meaning that make an argument indeterminate. He rejects the suggestion that his criticism merely imposes an external vocabulary: the decisive issue is what a proposition means, not which word expresses it. Definitions of economic activity, utility, and cost must therefore be assessed across their successive uses, rather than defended as isolated formulations.

The psychological account of utility and cost becomes a central test of this requirement:

Aehnlich verhält es sich mit meiner Darstellung seiner Behandlung der Begriffe »Nutzen« und »Kosten«.

English translation: It is similar with my account of his treatment of the concepts "utility" and "cost."

Amonn questions the identification of deprivation with displeasure and argues that placing these notions together does not demonstrate their equivalence. In his reading, defining utility and cost through pleasure and displeasure produces difficulties of comparison that Liefmann subsequently addresses by shifting the definitions. The objection concerns the continuity of the reasoning, not simply the acceptability of psychological terminology.

Money supplies a more extended example. Amonn allows that different scientific concepts can select different economically significant aspects of the same phenomenon. Such plurality is legitimate only when the concepts are explicitly distinguished and consistently applied. He accuses Liefmann of alternating between money as an actual means of payment and money as an abstract accounting unit, while presenting successive definitions as exclusive:

Und in dieser Art geht die Begriffsbestimmung weiter und gar nirgends findet sich ein Hinweis darauf, daß es sich da etwa um zwei an und für sich gleichberechtigte Fassungen des Geldbegriffs handeln könnte.

English translation: And in this manner the determination of the concept proceeds further, and nowhere at all is there any indication that what might be at issue here are two conceptions of the concept of money that are in themselves equally legitimate.

This criticism also governs Amonn’s treatment of income and of distinctions introduced retrospectively to reconcile conflicting statements. Appeals to consumption versus enterprise, or historical origins versus current functions, cannot repair an argument unless those distinctions actually structure the passages under discussion. Amonn acknowledges an earlier citation error concerning money’s role in comparing utility and cost, but maintains that the corrected wording leaves the substantive contradiction intact. The dispute thus repeatedly turns on whether quotation and context support an asserted interpretation.

A further conceptual test separates available resources from actual expenditure. A capacity for labor may be given without the quantity of labor expended being predetermined. Amonn argues that recognizing this distinction does not entail assuming that agents already possess all the consumption goods they desire. His charge is that Liefmann substitutes one proposition for another and then attacks the substituted version.

The later discussion extends this criticism to marginal utility, imputation, and intellectual priority. Amonn distinguishes the valuation of an individual unit within a stock from the valuation of the stock as a whole. He also challenges Liefmann’s portrayal of imputation theory as deriving value from technical productive contributions, insisting that claims about earlier doctrines require supporting passages. References to Walras, Schumpeter, Mill, Jevons, and others challenge the novelty of ideas concerning price interdependence, credit and prices, and the equalization of satisfaction across wants.

Amonn concedes that economists have not always adequately separated economic from technical considerations. He denies, however, that this warrants treating their theories as a wholesale identification of economics with production technology. The article’s concluding demand for respect and truthfulness toward predecessors connects its textual disputes to a broader disciplinary ethic. Beneath its personal hostility, its governing claim is that economic theory advances through precise distinctions and demonstrable argument, not through exaggerated novelty secured by misrepresenting existing scholarship.