Also in

REPRINTS OF ECONOMIC CLASSICS

By KNUT WICKSELL

Interest and Prices [1936]
Lectures on Political Economy [1934-1935]
Selected Papers on Political Economy [1958]

FIRST EDITION 1954

( LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD., 1954 )

REPRINTED 1970 BY

AUGUSTUS M. KELLEY • PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK NEW YORK 10001

By Arrangement With GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.

FROM A COPY IN THE COLLECTIONS OF
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

ISBN 0 678 00652 0
L C N 68 58668

KNUT WICKSELL

With a Foreword by
Professor G. L. S. Shackle

Translated by
S. H. Frowein

George Allen & Unwin Ltd

RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET LONDON

First published in 1954

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1911, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher

The German original
ÜBER WERT, KAPITAL UND RENTE
was first published in 1893

to the English translation
by G. L. S. SHACKLE

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

I wish to take this opportunity of thanking Professor A. J. Brown for having first drawn my attention to the need for an English translation of Wicksell’s Über Wert, Kapital und Rente.

I also desire to acknowledge the generous help of my friend Mr. H. G. Tupper, who gave unstintingly of his time and expert knowledge of the English language and without whose assistance it would scarcely have been possible for me to undertake this task.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The rough outline of this little work, or rather the first impulse which led me to write it, was provided by a few popular lectures delivered by me in Stockholm several years ago, in which I tried to present the fundamentals of the modern theory of value and of Böhm-Bawerk’s theory of capital, which had just then been published.

VALUE, CAPITAL AND RENT

1—The present-day position of theoretical political economy

At the end of the last century and at the beginning, or during the first third, of the present century the theory of political economy underwent a rapid development—especially in England, at the hands of Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo. This seemed to promise that one day this branch of knowledge would be raised to the same level as the exact sciences. Since then, however, this development has not continued on anything like the same scale.