Franz Xaver Weiss, Professor Diehls Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorie von Böhm-Bawerk (1916)

Franz Xaver Weiss’s 1916 article defends Böhm-Bawerk’s theory of capital and interest through a sequential rebuttal of Professor Diehl. Its central contention is that Diehl treats qualified propositions as unconditional laws, confuses analytical categories, and overlooks explanations already supplied by Böhm-Bawerk. The polemic concerns both economic theory and the standards of theoretical criticism.

The opening separates terminology from explanation. Defining capital as produced means of production raises a question of analytical usefulness; identifying the causes of interest raises a substantive problem:

Diehl ist der Ansicht, daß Böhm den Zins fälschlich aus technischen statt aus sozialen Tatsachen erklärt.

English translation: Diehl is of the opinion that Böhm wrongly explains interest from technical rather than from social facts.

Weiss resists this opposition by distinguishing production through intermediate goods from production under capitalist ownership. Likewise, functional distribution among productive factors must be distinguished from the personal distribution of income. Technical conditions can therefore enter an explanation without making existing property relations conceptually indispensable.

The most sustained discussion concerns the productivity of intelligently selected, time-consuming production methods. Böhm-Bawerk’s proposition does not mean that every invention must lengthen production. Faster transport, for instance, must be considered together with the earlier labour embodied in its infrastructure. Neither labour time nor the duration of the final productive stage measures the entire waiting period.

Weiss distinguishes selecting the most productive known technique within each production duration from choosing among those techniques under prevailing economic conditions. The latter decision depends on capital availability and interest:

Ist der Kapitalsvorrat reichlich, der Zinsfuß niedrig, so wird von längeren Produktionsumwegen Gebrauch gemacht werden können.

English translation: If the stock of capital is abundant and the rate of interest low, then longer roundabout methods of production will be able to be made use of.

Rational selection does not create objective productivity differences among methods. Weiss’s comparison with diminishing agricultural returns likewise distinguishes technical efficiency from economically advantageous intensity of production. He consequently rejects Diehl’s identification of the resulting surplus with entrepreneurial profit. Superior adaptation may yield temporary gains, but competition can eliminate those gains without eliminating pure interest. An imagined equilibrium helps isolate enduring returns from profits associated with change.

The discussion of present and future goods reconstructs Böhm-Bawerk’s three explanatory grounds: differences in provision, undervaluation of future wants, and the productive advantage of having goods available earlier. Weiss argues that privileging the third ground does not refute the other two. Uncertainty about psychological causes cannot simply erase the valuations requiring explanation.

He also defends the transition from physical productivity to value by insisting on comparison of the same goods for the same person at the same time. Worthless output and unsuccessful production do not by themselves disprove the proposed relationship. Numerical examples illustrate theoretical relations rather than supply empirical measurements. Weiss repeatedly presents Diehl’s objections as failures to engage with the theory’s qualifications:

Hier liegt einer jener Fälle vor, in denen Diehl leider bei seiner Auseinandersetzung große Partien des von ihm besprochenen Werkes einfach ignoriert.

English translation: Here we have one of those cases in which Diehl unfortunately, in the course of his discussion, simply ignores large portions of the work he is reviewing.

This accusation characterizes the article’s argumentative method: conceptual distinctions are reinforced by appeals to explanations that Weiss considers neglected. His defense of interest under socialism follows the same pattern. If temporal provision, valuation, and production generate its economic core, altered ownership need not abolish it. Institutional differences alone do not establish its impossibility.

The concluding discussions broaden the defense to Austrian value theory and the relation between power and economic law. Weiss distinguishes objections to psychology from objections to isolating abstraction. Valuation requires actual estimates, not exact scientific measurement of feelings; even mistaken estimates can explain choices. His appeal to Max Weber emphasizes reasoning through purposes and means.

Finally, social power is neither excluded nor treated as an unlimited explanation. Monopoly, collective bargaining, and state intervention operate through valuations and economic constraints. Free competition supplies an analytical starting point whose assumptions can be modified to investigate these arrangements. While allowing reservations about particular applications, Weiss defends a framework connecting technical conditions, subjective valuation, and social institutions without collapsing their distinct explanatory roles.