Eugen Von Böhm - Bawerk ’ S “ Value , Cost , and Marginal Utility ” : Notes on the Translation

Ifirst read Böhm-Bawerk’s essay “Value, Costs, and Marginal Utility” 44 years ago, as part of my research for my MBA thesis, the subject and title of which was The Classical Economists and the Austrians on Value and Costs. I knew at the time that Böhm-Bawerk’s essay very much deserved to be translated. And some 20 or more years later, seeing that no one else had yet made the translation, I decided that I would do it at some point. So, in 1980, on my first trip back to New York City after having moved to California, I visited the Columbia University Library, whose extensive collections included Conrad’s Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, the 1892 issue of which contained Böhm-Bawerk’s essay. There, I made a copy of the essay. With one thing and another, such as writing my book Capitalism, that copy remained quietly filed away in my possession until last year, when I finally got around to seriously working on the translation. I did not complete the translation until last December. And even now, I do not consider it as absolutely final, because here and there a better choice of words is probably possible and there are still footnote references exclusively to the German original of Friedrich von Wieser’s Natural Value. And even now, I do not consider it as absolutely final, because here and there a better