Commodity theory

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Definitions of goods

The commodity theory / commodity science is a generalism that is dedicated to the complexity of "commodities". It deals in a transdisciplinary manner with the investigation of the macroeconomic function of goods and in didactic terms with the imparting of orientation knowledge in the vocational technical and secondary schools.

Commodity science understands the commodity as an economic object as a whole and assumes a scientific approach to the real economy . The theory of commodities differentiates in the sequence between natural value as physical resources , use values and exchange values in the social value of goods. It regards the commodity as the totality of means for the satisfaction of needs, which come into consideration as an object of trade and as a counter-concept to money.

The holistic nature of the specialist orientation focuses on the biological and cultural purpose of the goods based on the physical relationship between humans and their environment. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906–1994) called this approach of connecting the economy and its environment “ bioeconomics ”.

Commodity and commodity science

Viktor Pöschl (1884–1948) with his main work “Principles of Natural Order in Technology and Economics” (1947) is considered to be trend-setting in the science-oriented merchandise theory . The merchandise theory serves as a theoretical framework for merchandise science.

The Silo is based on the natural sciences and used to describe the goods in the natural history of common terms. Since the goods come directly or indirectly from the three natural kingdoms, the goods customer tends to distinguish the goods from the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom and the mineral kingdom. The goods doctrine understands the commodity as a life-serving means to need satisfaction and summarizes the most important product groups analogous to biology based on the aspects of use value to categories together: type of product, type of product, product family (. As the lower and upper groups) and merchandise order (goods sectors: household goods ).

The goods theory is holistic, starting with natural resources , it treats the goods in their " life cycle " from production to consumption and disposal . For goods cycle captures the general technology of the goods as technosphere exchange purchases of society, economy and environment. In the concept, the environmental orientation of commodity science goes back to Artur Kutzelnigg and the “ biology and commodity theory ” goes back to the professor of commodity science Josef Hölzl .

Integration subject at the commercial schools in Austria

In Austria, the teaching of goods at the commercial schools in the subject of " Biology, Ecology and Teaching of Goods " is an integrative natural science subject, derived from "Natural history and goods science lessons". The subject was renamed in the 2014 curriculum reform. Applied natural sciences are taught in business schools for 3 years and natural sciences in the first 4 years and technology, ecology and commodity studies in the fifth year in business academies . In addition, in seminars, optional subjects and non-binding exercises, deepening in sub-areas of the subject can be conveyed. Commercial school - 2014 curriculum, commercial academy - 2004 curriculum (to be discontinued), commercial academy - 2014 curriculum.

In contrast to the merchandise management theory (= economic merchandise theory ) , emphasis is placed on physical economy, the scientific access to goods and economics . The theory of commodities is therefore based on the relationship that exists between humans and their environment, because all socio-economic value creation is based on nature. Material flow analyzes and waste management as well as energy flow balances are scientific applications to the real economy. With regard to resources, commodity theory is an economically- oriented human ecology , and physically oriented to economics, a bioeconomic subject. It is located at the interface between natural and economic sciences, in reflection of social relationships with nature , commodity theory has the context of social ecology .

On the biological significance of goods and economy

Society is part of the biosphere . The interfaces between society and the biosphere are the “ materia prima ” of bioeconomics (this is how the biophysical and economic-physiological basic meaning of this term is intended ). People strive to optimally design their living environment and living conditions and to maintain their vital functions.

The special position of humans in the biosphere is that they try to satisfy their needs with the help of politics and to ensure the survival of their descendants. The questions about the influence of power and politics on the production of goods and the knowledge of the practices of various actors are the subject of political ecology .

Bioeconomics is a transdisciplinary connection between biology and economics in the interests of viability ; the structural means for maintaining life and quality of life are goods. The use value of the goods is their bio-cultural connection to health . Goods are the (biological) means of satisfying needs that come into consideration as (cultural) objects of trade, insofar as they are the (economic) counter-concept to money .

The focus of the economy is on the person as an economic subject , the commodity is the economic object : a distinction must be made between functional, institutional and macroeconomic interests. Beyond their material properties, goods are also carriers of knowledge ; the problem-solving capacity of the goods is based on the information invested in them. In economic ethics , the commodity - food and means of life - has the integrative task of socio-economic sustainability and biological viability: biocracy is a concept in which the commodity is discussed as a principle of preservation in the context of the bioeconomy. In the triangular relationship between ecology, economy and society, the theory of goods is to be viewed as a theory of sustainability on the basis of natural economic methods.

From an ecological point of view, all human economic activity is an expansion of human metabolism brought about by work : The biological performance and cultural task of the economy is to maintain and improve the quality of human life. That is the primary objective of the economy; to “earn” from it is a secondary formal goal. The commodity theory thus leads - in distinction between economics and chrematistics - to the subject area of consumer education . The business access to goods teaching is the Goods Administration (ger .: Trade & Commerce ) located on the goods as an object of trade (ger .: commodity , a commodity ) at the exchange value and the demand -oriented. On commodity markets are fungible natural products traded. Material flow management is important for adding value from natural products . On the way from resources to benefits, systems thinking combines the theory of goods with the life-orientated management theory and regards sustainable development as a biological transformation of the value creation system.

The 'commodity' as a scientific term is physically at the same time a bio-economic basic term for sustainable economics , which includes ecosystem services and other non- monetizable bases of life-serving economy: For example, air and water are not suitable commodities in the service of sustainability. In the interdependencies, commodity science starts out from nature as a fundamental economic category. 'Goods' as a generic term is more comprehensive than 'product' or 'good'; in social science terminology, water and air are viewed as 'public goods'. In the “social metabolism”, commodity theory relates to economic physiology.

Concepts of the theory of goods

Because of the dematerialization tendencies of the real economy, the strictly material conception of “goods” as it is handed down - also in economic science - is de facto outdated. Commodity theory is about the substance of the economy.

The terms commodity , good and product are not synonymous due to the different horizons of the biosphere, society and market. Their distinction is based in particular on:

  • the distinction between goods and products, d. H. of need (biocybernetics) and need (purchasing power in markets);
  • the distinction between goods (the effect: satisfaction of needs) and good (the performance: exchange);
  • the overall view in commodity theory (the commodity as a generic term is the object of economic activity).

The holistic meaning of the category “goods” has no equivalent in English. In the Anglo-American language area, the scientific tradition and further development of commodity science is not represented. Technology is not synonymous with English " technology ". The Anglo-American term " commodities " (French: "commodité", from Latin: "commoditas") reduces the meaning of goods to the marketability. Because of the narrowing of the economic framework, the social-scientific criticism turns against the commodification of all life. Forget about biology is criticized on the part of cultural ethology. Understanding the connections between goods and economy as a whole requires scientific knowledge.

The commodity science that emerged from commodity science looks at the phenomenon of “commodities” in an interdisciplinary manner in the evolutionary interactions between technology, economy and the environment. It reflects the social, economic and ecological backgrounds of the genesis of “goods”. Their ontology is a socio-ecological entanglement of matter, energy and information.

It is essential that the system-theoretical conception of “goods” under the paradigm of sustainability is much more comprehensive than the strict definition of goods management. From the point of view of evolutionary economics , the “goods” are exosomatic structures of a larger whole, bioenergetics and the economy of living things . The " ecological modernization " aims at geosociology, a sustainable coevolution of society and its technosphere with the biosphere.

Commodity theory is important for the physical foundations of ecological economics . The socio-ecological environmental problem is a problem of increasing entropy , especially a bioeconomic lack of information (negentropy). As a physical state of low entropy, the commodity is the economic equivalent of money .

The beginnings of an encyclopedic recording of knowledge of goods go back to the 17th century. In the 18th century the term “encyclopedia” was increasingly understood as a system of science. The culturally technical beginning of commodity science / commodity theory falls in the epoch of physiocracy , which saw the sources of economic wealth in nature. The subject has both the scientific and economic perspective of the goods in view and has been handed down in the commercial school system in Austria since the regent Maria Theresa.

With the change in the Austrian legal provisions for the curricula at commercial academies and commercial schools, the "goods theory" was decreed as an integral part of "natural sciences" and is summarized in the school year under "technology, ecology and goods theory" (Federal Law Gazette II No. 209/2014).

See also

literature

Technical article

Technical theoretical background

  • Ernst Kapp : Basic lines of a philosophy of technology. 1st edition. Braunschweig 1877. (Photomechanical reprint: Stern-Verlag Janssen & Co, Düsseldorf 1978)
  • Ernst Mach : culture and mechanics . Verlag W. Spemann, Stuttgart 1915. (Reprint: Westhafen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-942836-07-4 )
  • Viktor Pöschl : Principles of natural order in technology and economy. An introduction to economics, especially technology and commodity science. Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1947.
  • Wilhelm Ostwald : Energetic foundations of cultural studies . Klinkhardt, Leipzig 1909. (Reprint: BiblioLife LCC, 2009).
  • Alfred J. Lotka : Elements of Physical Biology . Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore 1925. (Reprint: Nabu Press, 2011).
  • Erwin Schrödinger : What is life? Looking at the living cell through the eyes of the physicist. (Original title: What is Life ?, 1944). Piper, Munich / Zurich 1989.
  • Ludwig von Bertalanffy : General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications . George Braziller, New York 1968. (Revised Edition, With a Foreword by Wolfgang Hofkirchner & David Rousseau, 2015)
  • Rupert Riedl : The order of the living, system condition of evolution . Paul Parey Publishing House, Hamburg / Berlin 1975.
  • Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen : The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1971.
  • Gerhard Vogel : The contribution of resource economics to the minimization of the entropy production of the irreversible economic processes in the open system earth. Habilitation thesis . Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1982.
  • Mathias Binswanger : Information and Entropy. Ecological perspectives of the transition to an information economy. Dissertation. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 1992, ISBN 3-593-34774-1 .
  • Vladimir Ivanovič Vernadskij, Wolfgang Hofkirchner (ed.): The human being in the biosphere - on the natural history of reason . Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Vienna 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-49084-6 .
  • Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker : The unity of nature . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1971, ISBN 978-3-446-12743-2 .
  • Georg Picht , Constanze Eisenbart (ed.): The concept of nature and its history . With an introduction by CF v. Weizsacker. Klett-Cotta Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 978-3-608-91420-7 .
  • Josef Hölzl : Introduction to the theory of goods . R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1989. (Reprint: Introduction to product analysis . De Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-486-21334-8 .)
  • Kenneth E. Boulding : Commodities as an Evolutionary System. In: Evolutionary Economics. 2nd Edition. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills / London 1982, ISBN 0-8039-1648-5 , pp. 49-81.
  • Hans Hass : Energon. The hidden common . Fritz Molden Verlag, Vienna 1970.
  • Hans Hass: The Hyperzeller. Evolution's new image of man. Carlsen Verlag, Hamburg 1994.
  • Max Liedtke (Ed.): Kulturethologie. About the basics of cultural developments. Realis Verlag, Munich 1994.
  • Hans Sachsse : Introduction to cybernetics with special consideration of technical and biological interactions . Vieweg, Braunschweig 1971.
  • Hans Sachsse: Anthropology of technology. A contribution to the position of man in the world . Vieweg, Braunschweig 1978.
  • Stafford Beer : Cybernetics and Management . Translated from English by Ilse Gubich. S. Fischer Verlag, Hamburg 1962.
  • Frederic Vester : New territory of thinking. From the technocratic to the cybernetic age . German publishing house, Stuttgart 1980
  • Frederic Vester: Our world - a networked system . Book accompanying the international traveling exhibition (1978–1996). dtv, Munich 2002.
  • Joël de Rosnay : The macroscope. Systems thinking as a tool of the ecological society . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1979.
  • Hans Ulrich , Gilbert Probst : Instructions for holistic thinking and acting . Haupt, Bern / Stuttgart 1988.
  • Heinz von Foerster : CybernEthik. Merve Verlag, Berlin / Schöneberg 1993, ISBN 3-88396-111-6 .
  • Peter Ulrich : Integrative Business Ethics. Basics of a life-serving economy. Haupt-Verlag, Berlin / Stuttgart / Vienna 1997.
  • Carsten Herrmann-Pillath : Outline of evolutionary economics . Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2002.
  • Peter Koslowski : The order of the economy . Studies in practical philosophy and political economy. JCBMohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1994, ISBN 3-16-146164-9 .
Subject didactics
  • Gustav Hofbauer (ed.): The goods in the world view of the economy . Festschrift for Edmund Grünsteidl (Editor: Helge Gasthuber). Austrian commercial publisher, Vienna 1970.
  • Josef Hölzl : General technology. (= Series of publications by the Institute for Technology and Merchandise Management ). 2., ext. Edition. Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1989.
  • Renate Buchmayr: The development of the subject of biology and merchandise theory at commercial academies under the influence of changing social and scientific conditions. (= Series of publications by the Institute for Technology and Merchandise Management. Volume 1). Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1990.
  • Richard R. Göller: Introduction to the theory of goods. (= Series of publications on teacher training in vocational schools. Issue 119). Federal Pedagogical Institute, Vienna (Ed.): 1990.
  • Rolf Becks, Günter Ropohl : Production. (= Teachers' Handbook Technology. Volume 7). Verlag Didaktischer Dienst Franzbecker, Hildesheim 1984, ISBN 3-88120-071-1 .
  • Beate Jessel, Olaf Tschimpke, Manfred Walser: Productive force of nature . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-50140-7 .
  • Hans Immler: What kind of economy does nature need? Solving the economic crisis with economics. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-10-034706-4 .
  • Hans Immler, Sabine Hofmeister: Nature as the basis and goal of the economy. Basic features of an economy of reproduction . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen / Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-531-13151-6 .
  • Andreas Gadatsch et al. (Ed.): Sustainable business in the digital age . Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-658-20173-9 .
  • Thomas Bauernhansl et al. (Ed.): Biointelligence. A new perspective for sustainable industrial value creation . Fraunhofer Verlag, Stuttgart 2019, ISBN 978-3-8396-1433-4 .
  • Wolfgang Haupt, Otto Lang: Commodity teaching for biology teachers. Curriculum. PH Tirol, May 2014.
  • Erich Faissner, Wolfgang Haupt, Brigitte Koliander, Otto Lang: Applied natural sciences and merchandise theory. The competence model. BMUKK, Vienna June 2011.
  • Erich Faissner, Wolfgang Haupt, Brigitte Koliander, Karin Kyek, Otto Lang, Angelika Schiechl-Pöhacker: School- type -specific educational standards in vocational training. Commercial college. Natural sciences, technology, ecology and commodities . Federal Ministry for Education and Women. Vienna, qibb December 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Curriculum of the Handelsakademie, Federal Law Gazette II No. 209, issued on August 27, 2014, Annex A1
  2. ↑ Curriculum of the commercial school, Federal Law Gazette II No. 209/2014
  3. ↑ Curriculum of the commercial academy, Federal Law Gazette II No. 291/2004 (expiring!)
  4. ↑ Curriculum of the commercial academy, Federal Law Gazette II No. 209/2014