Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Ein Zwischenwort zur Werttheorie (1890)

Böhm-Bawerk’s short polemical article intervenes in the controversy over marginal utility by asking Heinrich Dietzel to clarify his alternative theory of value before a substantive reply proceeds. Its central claim is methodological: a decisive controversy requires accurately stated positions and explicit agreement about what remains disputed. Following an opening criticism of Dietzel’s representation of marginal-utility theorists, the article develops this requirement and formulates four questions concerning costs, causal explanation, market prices, and labour.

Dietzel had complained that marginal-value literature burdened economics with excessive argument. Böhm-Bawerk replies that inaccurate accounts of opponents’ views generate precisely the further corrections and controversy Dietzel wishes to avoid. He promises evidence of such misrepresentation in a later response; here his immediate aim is to establish conditions for a productive dispute.

Ich möchte dieses Wort variierend sagen: „Zwischen klaren Meinungen giebt es einen guten Streit“.

English translation: I should like to say, varying this saying: "Between clear opinions there is a good dispute."

Clarity serves both the disputants and their readers. If Böhm-Bawerk attacks only one possible interpretation of Dietzel, he risks another charge of misunderstanding; if he answers every possible interpretation, he produces unnecessary complication. His request for clarification therefore links argumentative economy to the search for truth, while placing the burden on Dietzel to articulate a positive position as precisely as he has expressed his opposition.

The first question probes what Dietzel means by reproduction costs. Does the relevant magnitude consist solely of the quantity of labour required, or does it include material inputs and money expenditure? If it includes labour, does labour count by quantity alone or by its varying value across branches of production? Böhm-Bawerk also asks whether the prospective purchaser’s subjective valuation of freely purchasable goods rests on their monetary purchase cost. These distinctions matter because a theory referring to quantities of labour is conceptually different from one explaining value through inputs already assigned values.

The second question isolates the direction of causation between products and productive means. Böhm-Bawerk asks whether Dietzel treats the value of inputs as the ultimate cause of the value of outputs, and how widely he intends that proposition to apply. He distinguishes freely reproducible products from the potentially nonreproducible means used to produce them, then asks directly about the reverse relationship:

Räumt D. endlich rücksichtlich irgend einer Gruppe von Produktivgütern den umgekehrten Gang der Verursachung ein, nämlich daß der Wert der Produktivgüter sich vom Werte ihrer Produkte ableitet? Räumt er dies z. B. von Bergwerken, Weinbergen, Baugründen u. dgl. ein?

English translation: Does D. finally concede, with respect to any group of productive goods, the reverse course of causation, namely that the value of the productive goods is derived from the value of their products? Does he concede this, for example, of mines, vineyards, building sites, and the like?

Mines, vineyards, and building sites sharpen the issue: the reproducibility of an output does not establish the reproducibility of its productive conditions. The question seeks to determine whether Dietzel admits any class of productive assets whose value derives from their products, and thus whether his cost explanation has limits.

The third question separates the tendency of prices toward costs from the mechanism explaining that tendency:

Meint D., daß es für das Durchgreifen des Kostengesetzes im Tauschverkehr, für die Assimilierung der Preise an das Kostenniveau, eine unmittelbarere Erklärung giebt, als aus dem Walten von Angebot und Nachfrage, bezw. aus den subjektiven Wertschätzungen der Marktparteien?

English translation: Does D. hold that for the prevailing of the law of costs in exchange, for the assimilation of prices to the level of costs, there is a more immediate explanation than one drawn from the operation of supply and demand, or respectively from the subjective valuations of the parties to the market?

Böhm-Bawerk allows for substantial common ground: Dietzel might agree that market prices emerge from the subjective valuations of market participants. The remaining disagreement would then concern what explains those valuations—marginal utility, with costs operating through an indirect connection, or production costs as their immediate and ultimate basis. This move turns an apparently wholesale opposition into a more exact question about explanatory foundations.

The fourth question tests the cost principle against labour itself. Does Dietzel regard labour as freely reproducible and valued by workers and employers according to the maintenance and reproduction costs of a worker’s family, or does he accept the alternative account of labour valuation identified in the cited passages? Böhm-Bawerk does not settle that issue here. He closes by requesting a prompt answer, arguing that Dietzel’s confident rejection of marginal-value theory should presuppose definite judgments on these points. The article’s significance lies in its disciplined specification of the controversy: what costs comprise, which direction value causation runs, how subjective valuations produce prices, and whether labour can consistently fall under the proposed cost rule.