Siegmund Feilbogen · 1912
Feilbogen’s installment examines Wieser’s theory of natural value before extending the discussion to urban rents and money. Its central argument is that collective ownership would not eliminate economic valuation: scarcity, utility, and the complementary contributions of productive resources would still govern rational allocation. Natural value nevertheless provides a critical standard for assessing market prices shaped by unequal wealth and social power.
Sous le régime socialiste, la valeur finale des biens serait profondément modifiée. Wieser, comme nous le savons, appelle cette valeur, la valeur « naturelle », il a consacré son second livre² à élucider les lois qui la régiraient.
English translation: Under the socialist regime, the final value of goods would be profoundly modified. Wieser, as we know, calls this value the "natural" value; he devoted his second book to elucidating the laws that would govern it.
Natural value describes valuation freed from inequalities of ownership and distortions such as fraud, coercion, and error. Feilbogen presents it both as a challenge to socialist labor-value theory and as a means of isolating a constituent of actual exchange value. Even collectively owned land and capital would require economic assessment to prevent waste. The moral standing of workers cannot by itself determine the economic contribution of labor.
Il ne s'agit plus ici maintenant de valeur morale, mais de valeur économique et la valeur économique se règle sur cette question: De quel facteur le revenu dépend-il?
English translation: What is at issue here now is no longer moral value, but economic value, and economic value is governed by this question: upon which factor does the income depend?
This distinction leads to imputation: assigning portions of a joint product’s value to complementary inputs. The difficulty lies in distinguishing contributions that become productive through their combination.
Le problème le plus complexe de toute la théorie de la valeur est toujours l'imputation d'une partie de la valeur à un facteur déterminé de production.
English translation: The most complex problem in the whole theory of value is always the imputation of a part of the value to a determinate factor of production.
Feilbogen illustrates Wieser’s objection to Menger through three inputs producing a value of ten. Valuing each input by the loss resulting from its removal produces individual assessments totaling twelve. Wieser instead considers the contribution made by an input’s presence, including its effect on the value of its partners. Feilbogen proposes the terms “valeur d'absence” and “valeur de présence” to clarify the distinction. His appeal to Wundt’s psychology emphasizes that combination generates a surplus, without establishing an exclusive entrepreneurial claim: the properties and relationships of the combined elements also contribute.
Applied to distribution, this reasoning preserves land rent, capital interest, and differentiated labor valuations under common ownership. Scarcity would generate rent even on the poorest land, while capital committed for different periods would require interest calculations. Labor would be assessed through useful results and scarce capacities rather than effort or unpleasantness alone. Shared property income could supplement low wages without erasing these economic differences. Feilbogen distinguishes assessment from remuneration: equal pay might coexist with differentiated valuations if ambition supplied incentives, although he doubts that competition for recognition would necessarily increase happiness.
Natural value also illuminates public expenditure. Education and subsidized transport can yield benefits that private investors cannot capture because returns are uncertain or distant. Conversely, profitable alcohol production can produce social harms inadequately registered in its market price. Statistics may disclose these effects without making them precisely commensurable in money. Natural value thus challenges the identification of current prices with social benefit while retaining the need for economic calculation. Feilbogen leaves open whether the reduced importance of luxury demand would transform socialist prices more extensively than Wieser establishes.
The discussion of urban rents connects marginal utility with social hierarchy. Location premiums reflect not only construction and transport costs but also affluent tenants’ demand for visible status, whose influence extends into intermediate neighborhoods. Prague evidence distinguishes vertical, horizontal, and extensive development. Gains from urban expansion accrue especially to owners whose agricultural land becomes building land, while interest charges can encourage purchasers to develop idle sites.
Finally, Feilbogen distinguishes money as a social institution from its value to individuals. Monetary utility depends on income, needs, and prices; price changes may originate in commodity scarcity as well as monetary conditions. Wieser emphasizes the relationship between monetary and commodity incomes and the expansion of money payments, rather than a simple comparison of coin and goods. The closing assessment praises Austro-Hungarian exchange management but questions its resilience under international disturbance. Across these applications, Austrian value theory explains persistent allocation constraints while permitting criticism of market prices and recognition of the limits of calculation.
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