Franz Xaver Weiss, Abstinenztheorie (1923)

Franz Xaver Weiss’s encyclopedic article examines abstinence theory as an explanation of interest on capital. Its four sections move from the theory’s significance through objections and historical development to its relationship with agio theory. Weiss credits abstinence theory with making deferred consumption central to the interest problem, but argues that it misinterprets this temporal relation: postponement reduces the present valuation of future goods rather than adding an independent sacrifice to production costs.

The opening presents Senior’s account of abstinence as a productive factor alongside labor and natural forces, rewarded by interest as labor is rewarded by wages. Weiss rejects the accusation that Senior merely sought to justify capitalist income. Against the background of labor-based explanations of exchange value, Senior addressed a genuine difficulty: explaining the product’s surplus value over production outlays.

Die Lehre Seniors bedeutet daher einen wichtigen Fortschritt der Zinstheorie, der um so höher anzuschlagen ist, als Senior durch den Hinweis auf die Tatsache des Genußaufschubes zwar nicht als erster, wohl aber unbeeinflußt von früheren Autoren, die Erklärung des Kapitalzinses mit dem Zeitablauf in Zusammenhang gebracht hat.

English translation: Senior's doctrine therefore signifies an important advance in the theory of interest, one to be rated all the more highly because, by pointing to the fact of the postponement of enjoyment, Senior — not indeed as the first, but certainly uninfluenced by earlier authors — brought the explanation of interest on capital into connection with the lapse of time.

This historical credit does not imply acceptance of Senior’s mechanism. Weiss first distinguishes a weak objection from a fundamental one. Against Lassalle’s contention that interest income bears no proportion to its recipient’s actual self-denial, he accepts the abstinence theorists’ marginal argument: the sacrifice needed to secure the last increment of saving determines the interest rate, even if much capital is accumulated with little or no sacrifice. The replacement of “abstinence” by “waiting” further removes the misleading suggestion that every act of accumulation requires material privation.

Böhm-Bawerk’s objection, however, concerns explanation rather than terminology. Both theories recognize that people are generally less willing to sacrifice present resources for more distant satisfaction. Agio theory interprets this as a lower present valuation of future goods; abstinence theory adds a separate waiting cost to labor and material outlays. Weiss regards these interpretations as incompatible. Resources committed even to immediate consumption have already been surrendered for alternative uses; directing them toward a later satisfaction cannot entail another surrender of those same uses.

Durch die Vergrößerung des zeitlichen Abstandes vom Genußziele erfolgt eben keine Erhöhung der Kosten durch Entstehung eines Enthaltungs- oder Warteopfers, sondern eine Verringerung des Wertes des künftigen Genußgutes in seiner gegenwärtigen Schätzung.

English translation: Through the enlargement of the temporal distance from the goal of enjoyment there occurs precisely no increase of costs through the emergence of a sacrifice of abstinence or of waiting, but rather a diminution of the value of the future good of enjoyment in its present estimation.

The decisive conceptual move is therefore from an additional cost to a difference in valuation. Weiss grants agio theory at least a relative superiority because it locates the effect of time in the present assessment of the future product, without treating waiting as a separately compensable input.

The historical section traces both direct continuations of Senior and combinations with theories of capital’s productivity or its independently conceived services. Bastiat, Cairnes, and Courcelle-Seneuil emphasize deferred enjoyment; Sidgwick and Cassel combine abstinence with capital services, while Rossi, Roscher, Mill, and Jevons connect it with productivity. Weiss refuses to dismiss these combinations as mere eclecticism, noting that agio theorists, with F. A. Fetter as the exception, also invoke capital’s technical productivity. Marshall gives the synthesis a supply-and-demand form: productivity governs demand for capital, while the burden of waiting restricts its supply. Carver extends marginal analysis to the value relation between present and future goods.

The final section explains why Marshall, Carver, and others regard waiting sacrifice and the undervaluation of future needs as expressions of one fact. Weiss points to the Anglo-American emphasis on labor’s disutility, which encourages a parallel treatment of waiting, and to the desire to preserve continuity with classical doctrine. Although the vocabulary of “waiting” brings the theories closer, he insists that their difference remains substantive:

Bei näherer Betrachtung ergibt sich indessen, daß nach wie vor der grundlegende Unterschied zwischen den beiden Anschauungen darin besteht, daß die Abstinenztheorie in der Tatsache des Genußaufschubes ein neben den anderen Aufwendungen bestehendes selbständiges Opfer erblickt, das durch den Zins vergolten wird.

English translation: On closer examination, however, it emerges that the fundamental difference between the two views still consists in this, that the abstinence theory sees in the fact of the postponement of enjoyment an independent sacrifice existing alongside the other outlays, which is recompensed by interest.

The article’s significance lies in this separation of a shared psychological observation from rival causal accounts. Weiss preserves Senior’s discovery of time’s explanatory importance while rejecting the conversion of deferred enjoyment into an autonomous production cost.