The Economic Journal

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: REVIEWS Einige Strittige Fragen der Capitalstheorie. Drei Abhandlungen. Von E. Von Bohm Bawekk. (Wien und Leipzig: Braumiiller.) 1900. In this book, which is entirely critical, Professor Bohm Bawerk addresses himself not to the well-worn arguments for and against the theory of final utility in relation to...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: REVIEWS Einige Strittige Fragen der Capitalstheorie. Drei Abhandlungen. Von E. Von Bohm Bawekk. (Wien und Leipzig: Braumiiller.) 1900. In this book, which is entirely critical, Professor Bohm Bawerk addresses himself not to the well-worn arguments for and against the theory of final utility in relation to the theory of capital, but to one or two minor points which may be fresh to many readers. He had dismissed them briefly in his larger book as hardly controversial, but, since critics had controverted his views on them, he proceeded to deal with them further in the essays now put together into one small volume. (1) The critics (Lexis and Philippovich) doubted the truth of his principle that the longer ways of production are technically the most productive. He admits that it is a conclusion of experience but considers that a large range of experience has well established it as a broad general rule (cf. 39). If it is true in the great majority of cases, then that is enough to cause the phenomena of interest (40). It is in fact the truth that lies in the common notion of the productivity of capital (11), and if the immediate ways of production were as fruitful as the indirect there would be none of the actual economic dependence of labourers on capitalists (13), though there might still be of labourers on land-owners (14). Lexis objects that all technical invention has tended not to lengthen but to shorten the period of production and to lessen the number of labourers employed in it in proportion to the capital employed (15). In substance the Professor answers that it is so, once you have made the invention, but to make the invention you need to pause and take time, that is, you need to take the longer way (18 cf 35, 37), ? while, besides, the curtailment of the labour is ..