Positive Theory of Capital by Eugen von Bohm Bawerk

Author:Eugen von Bohm Bawerk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Capital; Interest; Austrian; Economics

shown, by a bold stroke of genius, that here was a new circle of ideas waiting to be taken up, than shown what was to be done with them. Closely following Jevons, without going beyond their master, are, quite recently, Launhardt (MathematiscJie Begriindung der Volkswirthschaftslehre, 1885) and Emil Sax. (Grundhgung der theoretischen Staatswirthschaft, 1887, pp. 178, 313). A little before these G. Gross (Die Zeit in der VolTcswirthsekaft, in the Zeitschri/t fur die ges. Staatswissenschaft, 1883, p. 126) had made a well-meant suggestion,—which, however, was by that time carried out by Jevons and then by myself,—that the element of time in economical theory was worthy of a fuller consideration. Finally, as concerns my own work, I owe it to myself to say that I arrived at my views on this subject in complete independence, and altogether uninfluenced by Jevons—and, naturally, still less by later writers. I first became acquainted with Jevons's writings in 1883,—shortly before the printing of my Capital and Interest, —when completing the historical material already collected in that work by a review of the latest English literature on the subject. The principles of my own theory of capital, on the other hand, were laid down by me as early as 1876. In that year I first suggested them in a youthful work never published. In later writings I gave many plain, if still cautious, hints of my leading ideas {e.g. in Sechte und VcrluiUnisse, p. 68 in note on the phenomenon of Ainutzung, pp. 76 and particularly 109, 115 in note, on the computation of the future use, and p. 152 ; in Capital and Interest, pp. 257, 276, 343, 424, and particularly on p. 428 where I formulated the programme of my positive theory in saying that the explanation of interest was to be deduced from the influence of Time on human valuations of goods). The cautious tone which I still deliberately adopted in giving these hints was due to my desire not to compromise my new ideas by any premature or incomplete formulation of them. I meant that they should not go before the public till I was in a position to produce them as a finished whole, all harmoniously fitted in to a system of carefully planned economic doctrine. That is why I preferred to work for ten years at laying the foundation of the present theory by completing the theory of goods (1881), the criticism of the theories of capital (1884), and the theory of value (1886), rather than snatch, as I might easily have done, at the glory of priority by publishing original but still immature ideas a decade earlier. Moreover my theory, if it touches that of Jevons at several points, by no means agrees with it in essence ; and in the most important points, such as the explanation of interest, it is in distinct opposition to his.

Let us clearly understand what this latter statement means. It means that our anxiety in the present is to have at our disposal, in the future, means for the satisfaction of wants that will not emerge till the future.

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