Richard Strigl, “Der Kapitalzins als Residual-Rente” (1921)

Strigl’s essay is a compact Austrian intervention in distribution theory. Its six sections move from Clark’s marginal-productivity doctrine to the origin of interest, the relation of surplus product to surplus value, the rate of interest, the concept of capital, and finally imputation in an isolated economy. The opening critique is directed at Clark’s claim that wages, interest, and rent can all be assigned by one marginal-productivity principle. For Strigl, the alleged exhaustion of the product by marginal products is not a value law but an unproved technical claim about physical output; competition can equalize prices, not make such an equation true.

Der Wert eines Produktivgutes ist gleich dem Werte des entsprechenden Grenzproduktes. Das ist ein Satz der Wert- und Preislehre. Ob aber das Grenzprodukt multipliziert mit der Zahl der mitwirkenden Einheiten von Produktivmitteln gleich ist, oder größer oder kleiner ist als das ganze Produkt, das kann uns nur einer jener Lehrsätze beantworten, welche wir als technische Hypothesen in unser ökonomisches System aufnehmen.

English translation: The value of a productive good is equal to the value of the corresponding marginal product. That is a proposition of the theory of value and price. But whether the marginal product multiplied by the number of cooperating units of means of production is equal to, or greater or smaller than, the whole product—that can be answered for us only by one of those doctrines which we take up into our economic system as technical hypotheses.

Strigl’s own hypothesis is narrower. He separates land from capital and reserves marginal-productivity pricing for “primary” factors: labor and land services. Capital is not treated as a third factor whose marginal product can be read off in Clark’s way; it is first the wage-and-rent fund that permits a roundabout production process. Since workers and landowners are paid according to what additional units would yield elsewhere, their marginal products cannot absorb the whole product of a capitalist undertaking.

Wir stellen also für die kapitalistische Unternehmung die These auf: Die primären Kostenelemente, also Lohn und Preis der Bodennutzungen können, wenn sie durch die Grenzproduktivität bestimmt sind, nicht das ganze Produkt umfassen, es bleibt nach Auszahlung von Lohn und Bodenrente ein Ueberschuß in der Hand des Unternehmers.

English translation: We therefore set up for the capitalist undertaking the thesis: the primary cost elements—wages and the price of land uses—cannot, when they are determined by marginal productivity, encompass the whole product; after the payment of wages and land rent, a surplus remains in the entrepreneur's hands.

This surplus is not entrepreneurial profit in the static economy. The entrepreneur as innovator belongs to dynamics; in statics he receives only a managerial wage. Nor can free competition eliminate the surplus if it arises in every capitalist enterprise. It therefore becomes a residual rent attributable to the fund that made waiting and the production detour possible. Strigl’s central thesis is that capital interest is this residual return after wages and land rents, determined by marginal productivity, have been deducted.

Against Böhm-Bawerk’s objection to productivity theories, Strigl argues that the physical surplus becomes a value surplus under static repetition. A capitalist advances goods, receives a larger product after the production period, and—once market adjustment is complete—continues to receive a recurrent excess in value.

Dieser hat eine Menge an Produkten vorgeschossen, um sie nach Ablauf der Produktionsperiode vermehrt zurückzuerhalten.

English translation: He has advanced a quantity of products in order to receive them back augmented after the production period has elapsed.

The interest rate is then explained by competition among capitalists: capital shifts from lower-yielding to higher-yielding employments until the residual is equalized relative both to amount advanced and to duration of binding. But this competition does not reduce capital to a marginal product. The static entrepreneur is only the capitalist’s Vermögensverwalter; rival entrepreneurs bid until the residual is exhausted as interest. Dynamic entrepreneurs may disturb this resting point, but the static theory defines the limit toward which the system tends.

Trotzdem bleibt die statische Kapitalzinstheorie von grundlegender Bedeutung, da ihr Gesetz den Ruhepunkt definiert, dem auch die dynamische Wirtschaft jederzeit zustrebt, wobei nur immer neue Störungen die völlige Ausgleichung hindern.

English translation: Nevertheless the static theory of capital interest remains of fundamental significance, since its law defines the resting point toward which the dynamic economy at all times strives, while only ever-new disturbances prevent complete equalization.

The fifth section refines the concept of capital. Strigl begins with capital as a fund of consumption goods used to buy labor and land services, then adds intermediate goods once production is divided among firms. Machines and semifinished goods become capital because they carry a value calculation that includes interest; “constant” and “variable” capital alike earn interest as advanced value bound in time.

Wenn also fertige Produkte nicht direkt zur Konsumtion verwendet werden, sondern zur Produktion dienen, d. h. zum Ankauf von Arbeitskraft, Bodennutzungen oder Zwischenprodukten, dann tragen sie Zins, dann sind sie Kapital.

English translation: When, therefore, finished products are not used directly for consumption but serve production—that is, for the purchase of labor, uses of land, or intermediate goods—then they bear interest; then they are capital.

The final section extends the theory from exchange value to subjective value in a “verkehrslose Wirtschaft.” Strigl’s larger ambition is to mediate Wieser’s exhaustive “Aufteilung” of product value and the Menger–Böhm-Bawerk “Verlustgedanke,” by which a factor’s value is what would be lost without it. Labor and land are valued by the loss/marginal-product method; the remaining product value is assigned to capital as the condition of the roundabout process.

Zwischen dem Verlustgedanken und dem Aufteilungsgedanken scheint eine Lücke zu klaffen, es scheint unmöglich, mit dem Verlustgedanken die Aufteilung zu begründen.

English translation: Between the loss-concept and the apportionment-concept there seems to gape a gap; it seems impossible to ground the apportionment upon the loss-concept.

The essay’s relevance lies in this double move: it rejects Clark’s universal marginal-productivity formula without rejecting marginal productivity for primary factors, and it preserves Böhm-Bawerk’s time structure while giving interest a residual-rent form. Strigl concedes that his surplus claim is a technical hypothesis, but defends it by its explanatory power for distribution, interest-rate equalization, capital theory, and imputation.