Viktor Mataja on Wieser’s Theory of Value (1885)

Viktor Mataja’s review of Friedrich von Wieser’s Ueber den Ursprung und die Hauptgesetze des wirthschaftlichen Werthes (1884) presents the book as a major contribution to explaining how economic valuations arise. Published in 1885, the review moves from the theoretical importance of value through an exposition of Wieser’s argument to qualified criticism of its organization, distinctions, and presentation.

Mataja situates Wieser within a tradition that treats use value as the foundation of exchange value. Against approaches concentrated on market equivalences, he argues that recognizing value as subjective significance requires an explanation of the formation of judgments:

Ist der Werth die Bedeutung, die wir den Gütern zuerkennen, so dürfen wir auch nicht mehr das Problem des Gebrauchswerthes mit einigen Bemerkungen über Grösse und Art des Werthes nach Zeit, Ort, Individualität etc. umgehen; es tritt nunmehr an uns die Aufgabe heran, den Process der Bildung der Werthurtheile darzulegen und die zahlreichen Momente, welche darauf Einfluss nehmen, theoretisch zu klären und zu verarbeiten.

English translation: If value is the significance which we ascribe to goods, then we may no longer evade the problem of use-value with a few remarks upon the magnitude and kind of value according to time, place, individuality, etc.; the task now confronts us of setting forth the process by which value judgements are formed, and of clarifying and working out theoretically the numerous factors which exert an influence upon it.

Wieser’s book addresses this task chiefly through the aspects of value that do not concern exchange. Mataja follows its progression from economic goods and economic activity to the origin and laws of valuation. Goods become objects of economizing when their usefulness is recognized, their quantity does not exceed requirements, and people can influence that quantity. Once these conditions enter consciousness, interest in anticipated benefits transfers to the goods themselves: they acquire value.

This account subordinates production costs to utility. The desire to save costs cannot independently explain value, since it already presupposes an interest in the benefits goods provide. Avoiding labor’s burden is a genuine concern, but Mataja reports Wieser’s distinction between valuing a good through the utility its loss would remove and through the effort required to replace it. These are alternative grounds, not additive sources of value. Under developed economic conditions, limited labor must be allocated among competing uses; an undertaking can therefore be uneconomic even when its return compensates for its burden, if it prevents another undertaking yielding greater utility. Labor theories also overlook productive forces irreducible to labor.

The decisive conceptual move distinguishes an isolated good, a unit within a stock, and the stock as a whole. An isolated good available for only one use is assigned to the most important use. Where interchangeable units satisfy several needs, however, the individual unit takes its value from the least important satisfaction still secured by the available stock:

Der wirthschaftliche Werth ist also Grenzwerth: jener Nutzen, der an der Grenze der wirthschaftlich zulässigen Verwendungen aus der Gütereinheit erzielt wird, ist massgebend für alle Gütereinheiten.

English translation: Economic value is therefore marginal value: that utility which is obtained from the unit of the good at the margin of the economically admissible employments is decisive for all units of the good.

The distinction explains why the value of an individual unit differs from the value of losing the entire stock, which Wieser relates to total utility. Mataja emphasizes that these rules extend to production and have a practical function: valuation enables people to meet the demands of economic management, even under arrangements substantially different from contemporary ones.

His praise concerns both the breadth of Wieser’s exposition and its grounding in ordinary experience:

Nie verlieren dabei seine Untersuchungen die streng empirische Grundlage, stets knüpft er an Thatsachen der gemeinen Erfahrung an und sucht selbst aus abweichenden Meinungen den wahren Kern herauszuschälen.

English translation: In this his investigations never lose their strictly empirical foundation; he always ties them to facts of common experience and seeks to extract the true kernel even from divergent opinions.

Mataja nevertheless identifies weaknesses within this conceptual architecture. He questions whether defining economic goods and explaining the origin of value require separate investigations, suggesting that they are the same problem posed differently and that their separation produces repetition. More substantively, he wants stronger emphasis on the relativity of the “unit of goods” used in valuation and disputes the classification of some cases as valuations by total utility. These objections qualify, but do not overturn, his endorsement.

The closing assessment similarly balances admiration and reservation. Wieser makes abstract arguments engaging, yet his images and antitheses sometimes distract from the subject. His avoidance of detailed engagement with the relevant literature may also disappoint readers. The review’s significance lies in its sympathetic but discriminating presentation of marginal valuation: Mataja recognizes its explanatory and practical power while pressing for greater precision about the units and aggregates to which its laws apply.