Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: Review of Johann von Komorzynski’s Der Wert in der isolierten Wirtschaft (1890)

Böhm-Bawerk’s review reconstructs Komorzynski’s account of valuation before challenging its restriction of value to continuously effective or reproducible goods. Its central objection is that Komorzynski turns a useful analysis of substitution and productive equilibrium into an untenable condition for the existence of value.

The review begins by locating Komorzynski broadly within Menger’s utility theory: goods derive their value from the importance of the satisfactions dependent on their availability. When a good is lost, a rational economic agent reorganizes the economic plan, substituting another good and shifting the loss toward less important needs. Böhm-Bawerk credits Komorzynski’s detailed treatment of this displacement, particularly where replacement requires production. He also accepts the distinction between equilibrium, where coordinated replenishment allows losses to reach the absolutely least important satisfactions, and disturbed equilibrium, where technical constraints limit substitution to a narrower range.

Wie gross dieser Kreis ist, und welchen Rang jene relativ unwichtigsten Bedürfnisse haben, darüber entscheiden technische Zufälligkeiten.

English translation: How large this circle is, and what rank those relatively least important needs occupy, is decided by technical accidents.

Technical circumstances thus determine which satisfactions can actually be sacrificed. Up to this point, Böhm-Bawerk finds the argument consistent with marginal utility theory. The disagreement begins when Komorzynski denies that needs of different kinds are comparable in magnitude. From that premise, Komorzynski concludes that disturbed production prevents quantitative judgments of value: the satisfactions dependent on a good would vary in kind and urgency without a common measure. Only continuously effective or replenished goods could be valued, because equilibrium would refer their loss to the same least important needs. Unique objects, rarities, mementos, and irreplaceable artworks would consequently fall outside valuation.

Böhm-Bawerk treats this conclusion as ingenious but contrived. His first objection exposes a tension within the account itself: shifting losses to the least important needs already presupposes comparison across different kinds of satisfaction.

Erstens sind thatsächlich auch verschiedenartige Bedürfnisse grössenmässig vergleichbar — sonst könnte ja jene fein abgestufte Rangleiter der Bedürfnisse gar nicht gebildet und gehandhabt werden, aus welcher wir nach der eigenen Annahme des Verfassers durch alle möglichen Verwicklungen hindurch jedesmal gerade die unwichtigsten Bedürfnisse auslesen, um auf sie jede eintretende Einbusse zu wälzen.

English translation: First, needs of different kinds are in fact comparable in magnitude as well — otherwise that finely graduated scale of needs could not be formed and employed at all, from which, on the author's own assumption, we select each time, through all possible complications, precisely the least important needs, in order to shift upon them every loss that occurs.

The hierarchy needed to explain substitution therefore undermines the alleged incomparability used to restrict value. His second objection targets the elevation of equilibrium from an analytical condition into a prerequisite for valuation. If perfect productive equilibrium were indispensable, Komorzynski’s theory would strictly imply that value never exists in practice.

Denn vollkommen »im Gleichgewicht« ist ja die Produktion praktisch doch niemals!

English translation: For in practice production is surely never completely "in equilibrium"!

The review’s significance lies in this defense of marginal-utility reasoning under imperfect coordination and technically constrained replacement. Böhm-Bawerk accepts that production and substitution affect which needs depend on a good; he rejects the inference that such complications abolish value. His concluding assessment preserves the distinction between an unsuccessful theory and valuable analysis: despite rejecting Komorzynski’s results, he praises the clarity and sharpness of the work’s criticisms of older approaches to the value problem.