Power and Utility: The Normative Economics of Friedrich Von Wieser

Abstract

Friedrich Freiherr von Wieser of the great Austrian triumvirate of economic theorists is well known as one of the founders, along with Carl Menger and Eugen von B?hm-Bawerk, of Austrian subjective value theory. Wieser's scientific contributions, epitomized in his Natural Value,1 were extensions, albeit original extensions, of Menger's seminal Principles of Economics. Most importantly, Wieser restated the theory of marginal utility {Grenznutzen was a term of his invention), and estab? lished a matrix for the valuation of goods in an ideal state. In addition Wieser established a theory of imputation whereby higher goods (productive factors inputs) were valued by the marginal utility of the goods (first order consumer goods) they produced. Indeed, Wieser's proposal of a simultaneous solution to the valuation of complementary factors of production is now famous.2 Wieser, however, was a man of vast intellectual resources. As a student in the Gymnasium he was especially attracted to and sociology, being greatly influenced by the writings of Herbert Spencer and Count Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy's history of the anonymous masses, as exemplified in War and Peace, influenced him particularly. Wieser was attempting to explain existing social relations and social forces through a study of the broad splashes of history, but he finally concluded that economic forces, more than any other, played the dominant role in social evolution. And, after Wieser was exposed to Menger's Grundriss, as Henry Higgs put the matter, it seemed clear that depends on economics and economics on value.3 Wieser's thought was never deflected from his early concerns about the economic determinism of and, although a long period of scientific investigation upon the nature and determination of value inter? vened, he returned to his first interest towards the end of his life. Most importantly, however, he returned to an analysis of economic society 179