CAPITAL AND INTEREST

CAPITAL AND INTEREST

A CRITICAL
HISTORY OF ECONOMICAL THEORY

BY

EUGEN V. BÖHM-BAWEBK
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK

TRANSLATED WITH A PREFACE AND ANALYSIS

BY

WILLIAM SMART, M.A.
LECTURER ON POLITICAL ECONOMY IN QUEEN MARGARET COLLEGE
GLASGOW

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1890

All rights reserved

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

MY only reasons for writing a preface to a work so exhaustive, and in itself so lucid, as Professor Böhm-Bawerk’s Kapital und Kapitalzins, are that I think it may be advisable to put the problem with which it deals in a way more familiar to English readers, and to show that the various theories stated and criticised in it are based on interpretations implicitly given by practical men to common phenomena.

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

The Problem of Interest

The phenomenon of an income flowing constantly from all kinds of capital, without personal exertion of the owner

The conditions of solution

The theoretical must be distinguished from the social and political problem. Characteristics of each

Danger of confounding the two; its common effects

Our task is the critical history of the theoretical problem

INTRODUCTION

THE PROBLEM OF INTEREST

IT is generally possible for any one who owns capital to obtain from it a permanent net income, called Interest.1

BOOK I

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PEOBLEM

CHAPTER I

THE OPPOSITION TO INTEREST IN CLASSICAL AND MEDIÆVAL TIMES

CHAPTER II

THE DEFENCE OF INTEREST FROM THE SIXTEENTH TILL THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY