Friedrich von Wieser · 1884
Wieser’s economic monograph investigates the origin of value and the principles governing its attribution to goods. Its central conceptual move is to explain value through human needs and valuations rather than treat it as a property residing independently in things. The preserved passages connect this psychological foundation to the determination of value at the margin, then qualify the account through exceptional valuations and the divisibility of goods. Value emerges through the relationship between useful objects, the satisfactions they make possible, and the constraints under which people dispose of them.
Die Werthdoctrin ist, wenn wir ihre Aufgabe richtig umschrieben haben, angewandte Psychologie.
English translation: The doctrine of value, if we have correctly defined its task, is applied psychology.
This formulation makes the explanation of valuation central to economics. It does not merely say that people have preferences: it directs inquiry toward the processes through which useful things acquire economic significance for them. The qualification concerning the doctrine’s properly defined task matters. Wieser is identifying what a theory of value must explain, rather than simply assimilating every economic question to psychology. His account asks how the importance of satisfactions becomes an importance attributed to the goods on which those satisfactions depend.
The distinction between enjoyment and valuation gives this inquiry its particular force. Goods may please us, but economic value involves something more constrained than the experience of pleasure.
Der Werth bedeutet das Hinzukommen der Sorge zum Genusse, es ist ein Zwang, den man in ihm fühlt, das Gleichgiltige zu schätzen, eine Einschränkung der vollen Freiheit der Neigung.
English translation: Value means the addition of concern to enjoyment; it is a compulsion felt within it to value what is indifferent, a restriction of the full freedom of inclination.
Value thus includes concern for what must be secured or preserved. Wieser’s language of compulsion describes the pressure of economic dependence: an object need not be immediately attractive to command attention when some satisfaction depends upon retaining it. The contrast between inclination and concern also prevents the psychological theory from becoming a simple identification of value with liking. Economic judgment can require us to esteem something otherwise indifferent. Its psychological origin is compatible with the experience of necessity.
The governing determination is stated with remarkable compression:
Der wirtschaftliche Werth ist Grenzwerth.
English translation: Economic value is marginal value.
The importance of this proposition lies in its shift from usefulness in general to the significance of goods at the relevant margin. A good’s capacity to serve important purposes does not, by itself, determine the value attached to a particular available portion. The marginal formulation directs attention to the satisfaction dependent on that portion under the circumstances of disposal. It thereby distinguishes economic valuation from an assessment of the greatest benefits a kind of good could ever provide. Read alongside the account of concern, marginal value explains why practical dependence, rather than the sheer intensity of an imagined enjoyment, becomes decisive.
Wieser nevertheless examines moments in which valuation takes a different form. The concluding material describes a “value of the kind” that presents usefulness through especially salient achievements:
In solchen Augenblicken schätzt man an den Gütern das, was der »Gattungswerth« von ihnen aussagt, nämlich ihre Nützlichkeit, wie sie sich unter dem Bilde der wichtigsten und hervorragendsten Nutzleistungen, mit Vernachlässigung der übrigen, darstellt.
English translation: At such moments one values in goods what their “value as a kind” expresses, namely their usefulness as it presents itself in the image of the most important and outstanding services they render, disregarding the others.
This passage distinguishes two objects of attention. One is the usefulness of a class of goods, represented by its outstanding services; the other is the economically relevant importance of an available quantity. The former can dominate consciousness in exceptional moments without providing the general measure established by the marginal principle. Wieser’s formulation therefore allows variation in experienced valuation while retaining a distinction between conspicuous usefulness and the dependence involved in ordinary economic choice.
A further difficulty is that value appears to belong to the object even though its source is human:
Obwohl in Wahrheit aus dem menschlichen Innern entsprungen, scheint er doch in den Gütern seinen Sitz zu haben und uns von denselben entgegenzukommen.
English translation: Although in truth arising from within the human being, it nevertheless seems to reside in goods and to come toward us from them.
This apparent objectivity helps explain why value can be mistaken for an intrinsic quality. The good confronts us as valuable, while the connection between that judgment and our own needs recedes from view. Wieser’s psychological explanation reverses that appearance without denying its force in experience.
Finally, the analysis reaches a practical condition of marginal valuation:
Die Thatsache, dass die Güter in Theilen verfügbar sind, ist eine letzte wirthschaftliche Thatsache.
English translation: The fact that goods are available in parts is an ultimate economic fact.
Availability in portions supplies the setting in which different uses and dependencies can be distinguished. Calling it an ultimate economic fact marks a foundation of the analysis, not another feeling to be explained away. The monograph’s enduring relevance lies in this conjunction: value originates in human experience, is shaped by constrained dependence, and receives its economic determination at the margin. Its account separates usefulness, enjoyment, and valuation while explaining why, in everyday judgment, they so readily appear united in the good itself.
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