Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems Concluded That It “Bear[s] Evident Traces of Having Been a Subtle and Artificial Afterthought Contrived to make a Preconceived Opinion seem the Natural Outcome of a Prolonged Investigation”

Disputes with socialism soon went beyond the labor theory of value and brought the “socialist state” into question in many respects. Böhm-Bawerk, for example, regarded interest as an economic category wholly independent of the social system; interest would exist even in the “socialist state.” Wieser criticized socialist writers for their inadequate teaching of value’s role in the socialist state. He came to the conclusion that “not for one day could the [socialist] economic state of the future be administered according to any such reading of value.” For Wieser, “in the socialist theory of value pretty nearly everything is wrong.” . . .

In one perceptive essay, Komorzynski tried to prove that Marxist theories were “at the greatest possible odds with the real economic processes.” The contradiction stemmed “from the basic principle, not from the utopian thinking.” In his famous Zum Abschluß des Marxschen Systems (1896) (Karl Marx and the Close of His System, 1949), Böhm-Bawerk summarized his previous critique and came to the conclusion—based on the well-known contradictions between the first two and the third volumes of Das Kapital —that the final Marxist theory “contains as many cardinal errors as there are points in the arguments.” They “bear evident traces of having been a subtle and artificial afterthought contrived to make a preconceived opinion seem the natural outcome of a prolonged investigation.”

--Eugen Maria Schulak and Herbert Unterköfler, The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, and Institutions, trans. Arlene Oost-Zinner (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2011), 91-92.