Carl Menger’s Vorwort, originally published in 1896 and republished in 2012, is a scholarly preface endorsing a systematic theory of saving. Signed in Vienna on 8 July 1895, it moves from a methodological diagnosis of economics through a distinction between technical economy and saving to an appreciation of Italian economic scholarship.
Menger argues that economists have privileged the visible, technical aspects of economic life—their history, forms, and development—over the decisions that give movements of goods their purpose and direction. These less visible acts require principally psychological investigation. Their neglect, which he associates with an early stage of scientific development, has especially obstructed the theory of saving.
His central distinction separates economy of means from the allocation of resources across time. Technical thrift seeks a given result in production, exchange, or consumption with the least expenditure of goods. Saving in the specifically economic sense instead reserves the results of present economic activity for future periods or increases the underlying wealth that supplies continuing income. It therefore concerns decisions about when needs will be satisfied and whether income becomes wealth for use or productive wealth.
Die Lehre vom Sparen hat bisher weder ihre systematische Stellung in der Wirtschaftstheorie gefunden, noch auch ihre systematische Ausgestaltung erfahren.
English translation: The doctrine of saving has hitherto neither found its systematic place in economic theory nor undergone its systematic elaboration.
This judgment identifies a gap more demanding than a failure to praise thrift. Menger considers references to capital formation and the moral value of saving inadequate substitutes for a systematic account. Such an account must investigate effects on individual welfare and the economy, including capital formation, interest rates, production, distribution, consumption, and monetary circulation. The preface sets out this research agenda without claiming to supply its results; it commends the introduced work for attempting to ground a comprehensive theory in the economic nature and function of saving.
The closing movement places that undertaking within the revival of Italian political economy over the preceding three decades. Menger presents Italy as having moved beyond intellectual dependence to repay—and in some respects surpass—the stimulus received from other countries. He emphasizes Austrian economists’ appreciative reception of this achievement, linking methodological renewal to international scholarly exchange.
Und so möchte ich auch dieses Werk, das unserer Wissenschaft ein im wesentlichen neues Gebiet der Forschung zu erobern sucht, mit dem Wunsche begleiten, dass es sich den Schöpfungen des italienischen Geistes auf dem Gebiete der Politischen Oekonomie würdig arreihen möge.
English translation: And so I should like to accompany this work too, which seeks to conquer for our science an essentially new field of research, with the wish that it may worthily take its place among the creations of the Italian mind in the field of political economy.
The concluding wish makes the preface both an endorsement and a statement of disciplinary priorities. Its conceptual force lies in relocating saving from technical efficiency and moral exhortation to purposeful economic choice across time, whose consequences call for their own systematic explanation.
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