[Rezension zu Augusto Graziani: Storia critica della teoria del valore in Italia; Augusto Montanari: Contributo alla storia della teoria del valore negli scrittori italiani]

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: Review of Graziani and Montanari (1890)

Böhm-Bawerk’s brief review examines two histories of Italian value theory published in 1889: Augusto Graziani’s Storia Critica della Teoria del Valore in Italia and Augusto Montanari’s Contributo alla Storia della Teoria del valore negli scrittori Italiani. Its central judgment is that these works combine substantial historical scholarship with contributions to value theory itself.

Beginning with a comparison to Robert Zuckerkandl’s German history of price theory, Böhm-Bawerk distinguishes the scope and method of the two Italian studies. Graziani embeds the Italian literature within surveys of the broader development of value theory, effectively producing a general historical sketch enriched by a particularly careful account of Italian contributions. Montanari, prompted by Graziani’s work, draws on years of literary research to recover authors Graziani omitted. Yet his connecting discussions give the study an independent significance beyond supplementation.

Beide Schriften erwecken eine hohe Vorstellung vom Reichtum der italienischen Litteratur und von dem regen Eifer, mit welchen die theoretischen Studien neuerdings wieder in Italien betrieben werden.

English translation: Both writings awaken a high conception of the richness of Italian literature and of the lively zeal with which theoretical studies have of late again been pursued in Italy.

This praise links the recovery of a national intellectual tradition to the contemporary renewal of theoretical inquiry. Böhm-Bawerk then makes the review’s decisive conceptual move: historical exposition becomes a means of advancing the theory whose development it recounts.

Sie haben übrigens nicht bloss als referierende Darstellungen Wert, sondern bereichern die Werttheorie auch in positiver Weise durch eingestreute kritische und dogmatische Darlegungen der Autoren selbst.

English translation: They have value, moreover, not merely as expository accounts, but enrich the theory of value in a positive way as well, through the critical and dogmatic disquisitions of the authors themselves interspersed in them.

The closing sentence specifies the theoretical direction of that contribution:

Auf genaueres hier einzugehen verbietet mir der Raum; ich begnüge mich zu erwähnen, dass sowohl Graziani als Montanari — geradeso wie Zuckerkandl — die Theorie des »Grenznutzens« als die reifste Frucht der bisherigen Entwicklung und als die Grundlage für den fernen Ausbau der Werttheorie ansehen.

English translation: Space forbids me to enter here into greater detail; I content myself with mentioning that both Graziani and Montanari — just as Zuckerkandl does — regard the theory of "marginal utility" as the ripest fruit of the development hitherto and as the foundation for the further building out of the theory of value.

Böhm-Bawerk offers no detailed reconstruction of their arguments, but singles out their shared endorsement of marginal utility as both a historical culmination and a foundation for further inquiry. The review thus matters as an appreciative assessment of Italian scholarship and as evidence of the convergence he perceived between historical research and marginal-utility theory.