Hermann von Schullern zu Schrattenhofen · 1894
Schullern’s scholarly review presents Benini’s contribution to value theory as a work of substantial conceptual clarity and theoretical promise, while reserving judgment on its explanation of income distribution. After briefly situating Benini among his earlier economic publications, the review follows the book’s two-part movement from the principle of economic action to valuation, first in isolation and then in exchange. Its central assessment is that Benini advances value theory through illuminating connections and refinements as well as original arguments.
Schullern praises the introductory discussion of economic classification and deduction, although he finds the classification incomplete. In the first part, the precise definition of self-interest promises to dissolve controversies arising from misunderstandings of that concept. The treatment of needs—their origins, multiplication, intensity, and interrelations—receives particularly strong approval:
Dieser Paragraph ist in hohem Grade lesenswert und vertieft das Problem ganz erheblich.
English translation: This section is in a high degree worth reading and deepens the problem quite considerably.
The merit here is not primarily novelty, but the clear and persuasive reorganization of familiar material. Subsequent discussions of effort and its relation to enjoyment establish the conceptual pair governing Schullern’s account of Benini’s theory: satisfaction obtained and exertion undertaken to obtain it.
In the second part, Schullern locates Benini in relation to Jevons and Menger while emphasizing his extensions and independent contributions. These include goods whose value arises from social causes and the relationship between objective conditions and subjective valuation. Before valuing an object, the economic agent establishes its possible uses, their extent, and the difficulties of acquisition or transformation. Utility and costs thus supply the external conditions corresponding to satisfaction and effort:
Die subjective Bewertung selbst stellt uns den Gegenstand als Summe von Bedürfnis-Befriedigungen im Verhältnis zu den darauf verwendeten Anstrengungen dar.
English translation: Subjective valuation itself presents the object to us as a sum of satisfactions of wants in relation to the exertions expended upon it.
Schullern connects this formulation to Benini’s analysis of wealth formation: successive additions may increase quantities, enrich an object’s properties, or complete a combination of goods. The question is how the final addition is characterized and where the agent stops. He also flags the relationship between value and reproduction costs as important, without reconstructing its argument.
Exchange constitutes what Schullern calls the book’s most important section. Benini examines its conditions and consequences, especially the differential utility or rent generated by exchange and its division between the parties. Schullern additionally notes the possibility of different prices for portions of the same commodity. These questions lead into the deductive treatment of product distribution among producers.
Where different people possess different means of production, Benini assigns shares according to comparative subjective costs: what each person incurs for their own productive means, considered against what supplying the other factors would cost them. Time enters the explanation of entrepreneurial profit because the entrepreneur advances the other producers’ shares. Schullern finds the resulting account of labor especially provocative: the worker typically contributes to entrepreneurial profit and interest without compensation for that contribution, since the worker values future goods least highly relative to present goods.
The review’s strongest qualification concerns the status of this distribution theory:
Auch Benini erkennt an, so scheint es uns wenigstens, dass seine Theorie der Einkommensvertheilung nur ein Auskunftsmittel ist, das Anwendung zu finden hat, weil eine genauere Zutheilungsmethode versagt.
English translation: Benini too acknowledges, so at least it seems to us, that his theory of the distribution of income is only an expedient which has to find application because a more exact method of imputation fails.
The phrase “so scheint es uns wenigstens” makes this a cautious interpretation rather than an unqualified attribution. Schullern regards the theory as a provisional solution warranting closer examination, not as a settled allocation rule. His concluding enthusiasm nevertheless remains emphatic: Benini’s work deserves sustained attention from value theorists and a prominent place in the history of value theory. The review’s significance lies in this conjunction of strong endorsement and conceptual caution, particularly where subjective valuation must explain the distribution of a jointly produced product.
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