Friedrich von Wieser, Geleitwort zur vierten Auflage (1921)

Wieser’s foreword to the fourth edition of Eugen Böhm-Bawerk’s Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorien, dated Vienna, July 1921, justifies preserving the text unchanged after its author’s death. It moves from an editorial decision to an assessment of Böhm-Bawerk’s critical method, then closes by distinguishing Wieser’s admiration from agreement with every judgment.

The fourth edition reproduces the third, the last prepared by Böhm-Bawerk himself. Wieser treats the author’s earlier restraint in making additions as grounds for foregoing further supplements, particularly accounts of recent literature on capital. The decisive distinction is between a history that organizes theoretical developments into broad lines and a chronicle that pursues each contemporary publication. Preservation thus rests on a claim about the work’s intellectual completeness:

E. BÖHM-BAWERKS „Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorien“ ist ein abgeschlossenes Meisterwerk, das dazu bestimmt ist, als eines der klassischen Werke der ökonomischen Wissenschaft erhalten zu bleiben.

English translation: E. Böhm-Bawerk's "Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorien" (History and Critique of Theories of Interest on Capital) is a completed masterwork, destined to endure as one of the classical works of economic science.

This declaration of classical status supports Wieser’s refusal to alter the author’s formulation. Yet his praise concerns more than historical comprehensiveness. Böhm-Bawerk’s distinctive achievement is productive criticism: identifying error in order to establish firmer foundations for knowledge.

Er ging nicht darauf aus, den Irrtum um des Irrtums willen aufzudecken, sondern ihm war es darum zu tun, Irrtum und Wahrheit zu dem Zwecke zu sondern, um die tragfähigen Unterlagen abschließender Erkenntnis zu finden.

English translation: He did not set out to expose error for the sake of error; rather, his concern was to separate error and truth for the purpose of finding the load-bearing foundations of conclusive knowledge.

On Wieser’s account, previous explanations of interest had remained superficial at decisive points. Böhm-Bawerk penetrated misleading verbal conceptions to reach the theoretically difficult facts beneath them. His historical criticism thereby helped reformulate the problem of interest itself, making a complete solution conceivable.

The concluding paragraph qualifies this endorsement through Wieser’s own position as a theorist whom Böhm-Bawerk had criticized. Admiration does not entail withdrawing his explanation of interest:

Meine Zinserklärung geht in gewissen Punkten auf Tatsachen zurück, die meines Erachtens von E. BÖHM-BAWERK nicht recht gewürdigt wurden, die aber so abseits liegen, daß der Aufbau seines kritischen Systems im übrigen in keiner Weise berührt ist, auch wenn er mit seiner Kritik hierin nicht im Rechte sein sollte.

English translation: My explanation of interest goes back in certain points to facts which in my view were not properly appreciated by E. Böhm-Bawerk, but which lie so far apart that the construction of his critical system is in other respects in no way affected, even should he not be in the right with his criticism on this matter.

Wieser confines his dissent to particular facts while acknowledging substantial agreement with Böhm-Bawerk’s framing of the problem. He credits that guidance with saving him from serious errors that had misled earlier economists. The foreword’s significance lies in this conjunction of editorial preservation and qualified intellectual allegiance: Wieser presents a critical system as enduring without treating all its conclusions as binding.