Gossen biography

Gossen, German Henry, Gossen, Hermann Heinrich - if Herman Henry Gossen never existed, Marxists should invent him: the statement of the foundations of economic theory exclusively on utilitarianism; the deep conviction that the wise creator laid the task of harmonizing private and public interests on unstressed egoism; Protection of private property excluding the ownership of land as a further manifestation of the divine plan and the complete denial of everything that is even vaguely reminiscent of socialism and communism - this is the summary of its social position.

The inconsistency, however, is created by the release of the only book by Gossen, highly paraly entitled “The Laws of Human Relations, how they are developing, and the rules of human behavior deduced from here”: at that time, Marx has not yet published anything related to economic theory, with the exception of criticism of Proudhon. Gossen was born in the Rhine region in the city of he studied in several German cities, and in the city he continued his studies in Berlin and Bonn, and in the city of G.

He, apparently, did not like the duties of an official, and after several unsuccessful attempts to advance in the service, he left her in G. little know about his personal life after that. Bitterly disappointed with the inattention of the public to his “laws of human relations”, which, according to him, promised a coup in economic science, similar to what Copernicus made in astronomy, he withdrew all the unsold specimens of the book and destroyed them.

Subsequently, when Valras was amazed in the city of Valras, seeing that Gossen not only formulated the principle of decreasing marginal utility and depicted this graphically selecting the axis of the abscissa to measure the time, but, unlike Dupuya, he understood the difference between the curve of marginal utility and the demand curve, both of which have a negative slope.

Jevons with no less amazement discovered that Gossen formulated the theory of the ultimate grave of labor, strikingly reminiscent of his own, with a literal reproduction of the graphic structure of Jevons, demonstrating the alignment of the marginal burden of work and the maximum usefulness of the product of this work.

The “second law” of Gossen made a special impression on both of them, “a person receives a maximum of life pleasure if he distributes the money earned between different pleasures in such a way that the last atom of money spent for every pleasure brings the same amount of pleasure.” It is not easy to determine who influenced Gossen. Perhaps he read Adam Smith and Bentam, but since he does not refer to any sources, one can only guess about this influence.

It is known that he studied the "Guide to Political Savings" Lehrbush der Politischen Okonomie, Karl Henry Rau, and he was a follower of Smith. One way or another, he went forward so far in comparison with any of his possible sources that he could not find equal to the originality in the whole history of economic thought. However, he paid a high price for this originality and for his complete alienation from other economists and economic literature of his time.

The book was poorly structured, not having division into part or chapter; It was written by an clumsy and often ridiculous language; In addition, she abounded with algebraic formulas and long arithmetic examples, not to mention 24 diagrams - and this is at a time when there was a deep antipathy for the use of mathematics in the analysis of social issues. It is hardly surprising that the book was not noticed; If it was written better, it would have a greater circulation, but it appeared at the wrong time or in that country!

Literature: H. Sills Macmillan Free Press,; N. Gossen Mit Press,