Re-reading Carl Menger’s Grundsätze – another book that “cries out to be surpassed”*

Heinz D. Kurz

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2022, vol. 29, issue 5, 877-919

Abstract: The paper re-assesses (the non-monetary part of) Carl Menger’s Grundsätze (1871). It begins by pointing out that representatives of the so-called “German Use Value School” elaborated the theory of marginal utility prior to Menger. The paper then turns to Menger’s criticism of the theories of value and distribution of the classical economists and draws the attention to some important misunderstandings by him. After a summary account of Menger’s alternative construction, the paper informs about the criticisms put forward against it especially by his two main students, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser. It is then argued that contrary to Menger’s view, relative prices reflect inter alia the substances that “transmigrate” into commodities in the course of production. Despite the numerous objections levelled at it, the Grundsätze are nevertheless a “great” work, because it invites to correct what is problematic in it and develop what is sound.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2022.2111450

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