Franz Petry

Franz Petry (born May 17, 1889 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 29, 1915 in Wilna ) was a German economist.

Life

Franz Petry attended the Realgymnasium in Frankfurt and received his university entrance qualification there at Easter 1907 . It learned the trade of a businessman in his father's business. In the summer semester of 1909 he began to study economics and philosophy at Berlin University . In the following semester he continued his studies at the University of Freiburg . He studied philosophy with Alois Riehl and Heinrich Rickert . From the summer semester of 1911 to Easter 1912 he studied again in Berlin. From Easter 1912 to May 1914 he finished his studies in Freiburg and graduated on May 25, 1914 with his doctorate.

Petry volunteered when the First World War broke out in August 1914. He was wounded and died in a hospital in Vilnius in 1915.

Effect of his dissertation

In his 1916 posthumously published dissertation, The Social Content of Marx's Theory of Value , a distinction was made between qualitative and quantitative aspects of Marx's theory of value for the first time . First discussions with the only work by Petrys, who died at the age of 26 in the First World War, took place. a. by Rudolf Hilferding (1919) and Isaak Iljitsch Rubin (1928). Even Paul Sweezy (1942) referring positively to him, and more recently Michael Heinrich (1999). For Rubin, Petry would stand out in “the extensive critical literature on Marx, which offers such abundant examples of simple failure to understand and not want to understand”, because he pursued with “conscientious striving” to “penetrate into Marx's thought processes.” According to Heinrich, “no Marxist ”, But Petry presented a“ first methodologically reflected interpretation of Marx's theory of value, which strictly differentiates the quantitative from the qualitative moments ”. For Sweezy, this "little book" by Petry deserves "a lot more attention than it received."

plant

• The social content of Marx's theory of value . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1916. ( Online )

literature

• Karl Diehl : In memory of Franz Petry . In: Franz Petry: The social content of Marx's theory of value . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1916, pp. III – V.
• Rudolf Stammler : (review). In: Yearbooks for Economics and Statistics . Volume 108, Issue 1. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 1917, pp. 237-241.
• Review by Rudolf Hilferding (1919), in: Carl Grünberg (ed.): Archive for the history of socialism and the workers' movement , 1919, pp. 439–448.
• Isaak Iljic Rubin (1925): Two writings on Marx's theory of value: Franz Petry: The social content of Marx's theory of value. Jena 1916. 70 pages; Heinrich Dietzel : On the doctrinal value of the theory of values ​​and the fundamental error of Marx's theory of distribution. Leipzig 1921. 39 pp . In: Marx-Engels Archive . Journal of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, ed. by D. Rjazanov , volume 1. Marx-Engels-Archiv Verlagsgesellschaft, Frankfurt a./M. 1925, pp. 360-369. ( Online )
• Paul Sweezy (1942): Theory of Capitalist Development. An analytical study on the principles of Marx's social economy , translated by Gertrud Rittig-Baumhaus, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1988, ISBN 3-518-10433-0 .
• Michael Heinrich (1999): Annotated literature list on the critique of political economy . In: Elmar Altvater , Rolf Hecker , Michael Heinrich, Petra Schaper-Rinkel: Kapital.doc , Münster, pp. 188–220. ( Online ; PDF; 146 kB)