Social Value Part 10

theory of distribution--and probably a much less useful abstraction. Either abstraction is legitimate, if it do not seek to abolish the other factors.

We may safely enough define a set of legal and moral values, concerned with the organization of society and industry, and, a.s.suming them constant, a sort of frozen framework, let man's values with reference to the immediate consumption and production of economic goods ("utilities and costs" in current phrase) vary, and see what the consequences, both on the ranking of men, and the ranking of goods, will be. Or, a.s.suming "utilities and costs"

constant, we may let the legal and moral values vary, and see what consequences would follow. Or, a.s.suming all other factors constant, we may vary the size of the population, or vary the proportions between labor and productive instruments, or between land and population, or pick out any other factor of the concrete situation we happen to be interested in, as the "standard of living," and let it change, and see what consequences flow therefrom. But, in doing this, we must not forget that the other factors remain essential, equally potent in the general situation with the one on which we have centred our attention. And we must not forget that changes in one factor, while we may in thought allow it to occur alone, cannot occur without bringing in changes in the others as well. An increase in the number of laborers, e.g., may also mean an increase of _voters_ of a given political tendency, and may mean a change in the political power of cla.s.ses, and a change in the laws. And it may be tremendously significant whether the increased number of laborers consists of Irish Catholics, or of Russian Jews, or of native Americans, or of negroes,--significant from the standpoint of distribution, of the values of economic goods, and the direction of economic activity.[173] Reduce your labor force to "efficiency units," so that from the standpoint of productive power of the additions no difference is made whether they be of the one cla.s.s or the other, and still it is a matter of consequence, from the standpoint of distribution, and ultimately of the values of goods, whether they belong to one cla.s.s or the other. One sort of laborer may be capable of efficient labor-union organization, with the result that a large share of the product goes to labor. Another sort of laborer may be incapable of much organization, may work at cross-purposes with the rest of the labor force, and may be an easy victim of exploitation. "Other things equal," we may concede that productive efficiency, or "standard of living," or other abstract principle, determines the share that goes to labor--but many indeed are "the other things." The distribution of wealth is not an "arbitrary"

matter--if by that it be meant that no scientific laws can be worked out to describe it. Mill himself would be first to protest against any metaphysical "freedom of the will" here. But it is a matter into which law and morals and personal friends.h.i.+p and monopoly privilege and charity and benevolence and statesmanlike purpose and selfish struggle--in a word, the whole intermental life of men in society--are involved. And any principle of distribution that we may select is only true, not only if other things are "equal," but also if other things are in a particular set of relations.

We have seen the a.s.sumptions of a non-economic sort that are implicit in Wieser's conception of a "natural society." It may be interesting to note what is involved in the situation which Professor Clark treats in his _Distribution of Wealth_. That his system should hold, we must have, of course, private property, and personal freedom. We must have perfectly free compet.i.tion. We must have absolutely no monopoly privilege of any sort. We must have such rapid and free communication of ideas that no monopoly of knowledge should exist. But imagine the moral values that must rule in a society where such a situation holds! How are men to be prevented from getting monopolies? How prevent laws in the interests of the alert and influential? How prevent the monopoly of ideas? A very different moral situation must obtain in such a society from that we know. And a very different system of laws. In saying this, of course, I say nothing that was not obvious enough to Professor Clark when he constructed his system on the basis of "heroic abstraction," but still it cannot be neglected. Not every one who has undertaken to interpret Professor Clark, and to make practical application of his theories, has seen these limitations.

Or, again, what does the system of compet.i.tion mean? Why do we have such varied estimates from different writers? Why do some see in it a benevolent influence, while for others it is a ghastly nightmare? The answer is, I think, that compet.i.tion is an abstraction, which each makes in his own way.

If we look on compet.i.tion as a system where each is free to follow his "pure economic" tendencies in the shortest and simplest manner, I think there can be no question but that we must condemn it. The "pure economic impulse," namely, the impulse to get the maximum of wealth with the minimum of effort, left unchecked and unguided by any other social forces, would lead, by the shortest and simplest path, to theft, robbery, and murder. They are easier than work! And more sensible than work, if one be "_reinwirtschaftlich_," and live in a society where there is little chance that he who creates wealth will enjoy it. Or, partly checked by social constraints (thinking of these as "external" matters solely), the "economic tendency" may lead--as it has led--to the dynamiting of rival plants, to the securing of preferential rates from common carriers, to the corrupting of legislatures and judges, to the spreading of false rumors, etc. On the other hand, if the "rules of the game" are high, if compet.i.tion be limited to doing things which result in a better commodity with a decreased outlay of human effort and physical resources, and with kindly feeling among compet.i.tors (or even without this last), we may see in it a great source of justice and progress. It all depends on what Professor Seligman calls the "level of compet.i.tion."[174] That is to say, it depends on the extent to which the system includes factors of moral, legal and social nature, other than the "pure economic"--a thing "that never was on land or sea."

And what shall we say of "inevitable economic tendencies"? A good many of them--leading in diverse directions--have appeared in the literature of economics. On the one hand, inevitable tendencies towards a divine "economic harmony." On the other hand, inevitable tendencies toward monopoly; toward ever more numerous panics; toward greater concentration of wealth; toward proletarian misery of an ever more hopeless sort--all bringing us finally to a socialistic state. I see no inevitable economic tendencies anywhere. The "economic motive," as already indicated, if left free to work in vacuo, would lead us to anarchy. But it doesn't work _in vacuo_. And the question as to where the infinite complex of social forces may lead us is not one that can be settled "_reinwirtschaftlich_." We can only say that economic values, at a given moment, are the focal points at which the laws and moral values and loves and hates, and "utilities" and "costs" directly connected with economic goods, and the mult.i.tudinous other values of concrete social life exert their motivating influence on the economic activities of society. Then, given these economic values, and a.s.suming that they alone are of significance for the activity of society, we may see where they would lead us. But we should still be in a world of abstractions if we did so. For the economic social values do not exhaust the social forces of motivation. Very much of social activity is non-economic in character. And the force of a given moral value--say that of elevating the condition of a degraded cla.s.s--may be divided, tending indirectly by raising the value of a certain sort of economic good, to encourage its production, and tending directly to prevent its production.

Let us a.s.sume, for example, that this moral value leads to an increase in the income of the degraded cla.s.s, and so tends to increase the demand for liquor; but a.s.sume, further, that this same moral value is the force leading to a prohibition law, that forbids the production and sale of liquor. Ethical, religious, legal, esthetic, and other values may indirectly motivate the economic activity of men through entering into economic values, or they may directly, in their own form, antagonize these economic values, by constraining those who do not "partic.i.p.ate" in them, and by impelling those who do feel them to activities in lines other than those where the greatest surplus of economic value is to be gained. Even, then, though we have a theory of economic value which includes these other social forces, we have no right to speak of "inevitable economic tendencies." Social life is one organic whole. There is no phase of social activity which is wholly directed by one set of values, and there is no one set of values that exclusively depends on one sort of motive. And when we give exclusive attention, in our study, to one set of values, as it is often necessary to do, we must recognize that we are handling an abstraction, that the other forces remain, and must be dealt with before our conclusions have any validity for practice.

FOOTNOTES:

[163] See chaps. VI and VII, _supra_.

[164] Bk. II, chap. VI.

[165] _Cf._ Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 560. "For, in truth, not merely the distribution of the landed and other instrumental, income-commanding wealth in society, but also the distribution of general purchasing power ... are, at any moment in society, to be explained only by appeal to a _long and complex history_ [italics mine], a distribution resting, no doubt, in part upon technological value productivity, past or present, but in part also tracing back to bad inst.i.tutions of property rights and inheritance, to bad taxation, to cla.s.s privileges, to stock-exchange manipulation ... and, as well, to every sort of vested right in iniquity.... _But there being no apparent method of bringing this cla.s.s of facts within the orderly sequences of economic law, we shall--perhaps--do well to dismiss them from our discussion...._" [Italics are mine.] It may be questioned if the "orderly sequence" is worth very much if it ignore facts so decisive as these. It is precisely this sort of abstractionism which has vitiated so much of value theory. Most economists slur over the omissions; Professor Davenport, seeing clearly and speaking frankly, makes the extent of the abstraction clear. I venture to suggest that the reason he can find no place for facts like these within the orderly sequence of his economic theory is that he lacks an adequate sociological theory at the basis of his economic theory. A historical _regressus_ will not, of course, fit in in any logical manner with a synthetic theory which tries to construct an existing situation out of existing elements. Our plan of a _logical_ a.n.a.lysis of existing psychic forces makes it possible to treat these facts which have come to us from the past, not as facts of different nature from the "utilities" with which the value theorists have dealt, but rather as fluid psychic forces, of the same nature, and in the same system, as those "utilities."

[166] I do not, of course, mean to question the immense light which history throws upon the nature of existing social forces.

[167] Wieser, _op. cit._, pp. 79-80.

[168] _Ibid._, p. 62.

[169] _Pol. Econ._, 1888 edition, p. 5.

[170] _Principles_, bk. II, chap. I.

[171] Professor Clark seems to desire to exclude all phases of social life except the "pure economic," from his static conception, as indicated by the footnote which follows, taken from page 76 of his _Distribution of Wealth_: "The statement made in the foregoing chapters that a static state excludes true entrepreneurs' profits does not deny that a legal monopoly might secure to an entrepreneur a profit that would be as permanent as the law that should create it--and that, too, in a social condition which, at first glance, might appear to be static. The agents, labor and capital, would be prevented from moving into the favored industry, though economic forces, if they had been left unhindered, would have caused them to move to it. This condition, however, is not a true static state, as it has here been defined. Such a genuine static state has been likened to that of a body of tranquil water, which is held motionless solely by an equilibrium of forces. It is not frozen into fixity; but as each particle is impelled in all directions by the same amounts of force, it retains a fixed position.

There is a _perfect fluidity, but no flow_; and in like manner the industrial groups are in a truly static state when the industrial agents, labor and capital, show _a perfect mobility, but no motion_. A legal monopoly destroys at a certain point this mobility [so would a law forbidding the manufacture of, say, opium or liquor, or any law or moral force that prevents the individual's using his labor and capital in the manner most advantageous to himself regardless of public consequences], and is to be treated as an element of obstruction or of friction that is so powerful as not merely to r.e.t.a.r.d a movement that an economic force, if unhindered, would cause, but to prevent the movement altogether." This would seem to leave economic forces working _in vacuo_ in Professor Clark's static state--if "unhindered" is to be taken literally. It is probably a juster interpretation, however, to hold that Professor Clark has in mind a constant legal situation, in which absolutely free compet.i.tion is a.s.sured by law. But even in his scheme for an economic dynamics, there is no place for legal or ethical changes. There are five general sets of dynamic changes which Professor Clark mentions, whose operation is to const.i.tute the subject matter of economic dynamics. They are (_Essentials_, p. 131, and _Distribution_, pp. 56 _et seq._): (1) population increases; (2) capital increases; (3) methods of production change; (4) new modes of organizing industry come into vogue; (5) the wants of men change and multiply. These five categories are all, primarily, at least, economic in character. While legal and ethical changes would doubtless influence them, they certainly cannot comprehend the full influence of these legal and ethical changes, especially those affecting the ranking of men, and the distribution of wealth. There seems to be a marked difference between Professor Clark's point of view in his _Distribution of Wealth_ and that of his earlier _Philosophy of Wealth_, and I must confess my preference for the earlier point of view. In saying this, of course, I am far from impeaching the masterly economic a.n.a.lysis which the later book contains--rather, I join heartily in the general estimate which counts that book as of altogether epoch-marking significance. My point is, rather, as will be indicated more fully in the chapters on the relation between value-theory and price-theory, that the presuppositions and significance of such a study as Professor Clark's need clarification and interpretation in the light of a theory of value which takes account of the rich complexity of social life.

Professor Joseph Schumpeter, of Vienna, carries out economic abstractionism to its logical limits, both in "statics" and in "dynamics." For an estimate of his statics, _vide_ Professor Alvin S. Johnson's review of Schumpeter's _Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalokonomie_ (Leipzig, 1908), in the _Journal of Political Economy_, 1909, pp. 363 et seq. His dynamics is also to be "_reinwirtschaftlich_." An essay in economic dynamics, the introduction to which sets forth his general point of view, appears in the Austrian _Zeitschrift fur Volkswirtschaft_, etc., 1910, under the t.i.tle, "Das Wesen der Wirtschaftskrisen." In this Professor Schumpeter narrows, by a process of exclusion, the conception of what would const.i.tute a "pure economic" explanation of crises virtually to a pinpoint--and then fails to carry out his program of giving us a "_reinwirtschaftlich_" theory. For, in order to get any _periodicity_ into his economic movement, he is obliged to bring in, from the field of sociological theory, the factor of _imitation_--he does not use the term, imitation, though he does use the verb, "_kopieren_." (_Vide_ esp. pp.

298-99.) Professor Schumpeter very explicitly recognizes the existence of factors other than the "_reinwirtschaftlich_," but counts them as "external" factors.

[172] Cf. Professor Marshall's discussions in his sections on economic law and method, and Professor Davenport's cla.s.sification of the factors in the economic environment (_Value and Distribution_, pp. 514-15).

[173] The danger of the abstract individualistic study, from the entrepreneur's viewpoint--a useful enough method within limits--is well ill.u.s.trated by Professor Davenport's contention that "men as employees are pa.s.sive facts, mere agents under the direction of managing producers, and are therefore only potentially directing forces. The problem of production and of marginals.h.i.+p is, accordingly, an entrepreneur problem." (_Op. cit._, p. 279, n.) This is set forth as a limitation on the doctrine, stated in the paragraph which precedes it, that "man is to be conceived as the subject and centre of economic science, etc." Surely Professor Davenport's contention is an impossible abstraction from the rich facts of social control. The managing entrepreneur knows better, when he deals with union rules and walking delegates. And the economist, tracing the subtler forces that underlie values, and so motivate the direction of industry, should know more, rather than less, than the entrepreneur.

[174] _Principles_, 1905 ed., pp. 147 _et seq._

CHAPTER XIV

ECONOMIC SOCIAL VALUE (_continued_)

Back to the concrete whole, then, of social-mental life. The abstract elements with which the Austrians and the pain-abstinence cost school undertook to solve the value problem, have their place in this whole. The "utility" of goods to individuals, growing out of the nature of their wants, depends very largely on social causes. Mode,[175] fas.h.i.+on, custom--how powerfully they mould our wants. And individual "cost,"

likewise: a university athlete could dig a ditch far more easily, so far as bodily pain is concerned, than could an aged negro, and yet would suffer much more in doing it than would the negro. A social standard would bring a feeling of shame to him which the negro would not share. If we abstract from the concrete forms which individual wants and "costs" take, and define them in their lowest physical terms, we might leave out a social reference.

But men do not desire raw meat, and the skins of beasts, and caves in which to live. Their food they wish to eat in accordance with the conventions of their cla.s.s, and of a sort that their fellows eat, their water, of late, they wish free from germs, their houses and clothing must be "in style,"--facts well enough recognized, though not in themselves enough for a theory of "social value." These individual "utilities" and "costs" have little meaning till we know the social ranking of the men who feel them, till we know how much the men who have them count for in the scale of fundamental _human_ values. And their effect on "supply price" and "demand price"--the money measures of infinitely complex social forces, to which the entrepreneur immediately looks for his "cue"--has absolutely no constant relation to their intensity. The wants of slaves may count for little. The utterly unattractive and inefficient man may starve. The gilded parasite of a prerevolutionary French monarch may command untold resources, while the useful and productive millions may barely exist. On the other hand, with a changed set of legal and moral values, we may have men of social influence and power striving constantly to increase the incomes and relieve the sufferings of the poor and helpless. Our legislatures may be busy with laws shortening the hours of all labor, laws prohibiting child labor, laws restricting the labor of women, laws for the protection of miners, laws relating to the conditions of pay for labor and to compensation for accidents--which promptly reflect themselves in the values of the goods produced in the industries affected, and in the increased values--through increased "demand"--of the goods consumed by these cla.s.ses.

The ideal of "no pay without function" may attain--as I think it is to-day attaining--a value of increasing power. And it may lead men to strive for the abolition of monopoly incomes, and the correction of the gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth. If it do not succeed--and it does not by any means succeed--it is because opposing values check it. At any given moment, there is an equilibrium, usually unstable, between the forces tending to correct, and to perpetuate, these inequalities. And it need not be an evil force that is the real obstacle to the realization of greater justice in distribution. The legal value of private property--one of those social "absolute values" which do not readily lend themselves to the "marginal process"--checks at an early stage many of our well-meant, but badly planned, efforts at justice. Glad as most of us would be to deprive plutocratic pirates of what they have not earned, we still do not care to upset the fundamentals of our social system in the process. But the conflict between these values brings them both into clearer light. We see, and feel, the significance, the "presuppositions," the "funded meanings,"

of each. And while, for the present, there is a "mechanical haul and strain" between them, which, if no more light comes, may ultimately lead to the triumph of one and the complete defeat of the other, still, we may hope to get a result like that which often comes in the case of conflicts between values in the individual psychology--a fuller appreciation of the significance of both values, which will get us away from the "absoluteness" of each, and effect a marginal equilibrium between them, or, perhaps, get a new value which will comprehend them both. Of course, the thing is not so simple as this. It is not a conflict simply between two values, both of which the same man may "partic.i.p.ate" in. Our plutocrats are also parts of the social will. They count! The economic value they control may bribe lawmakers, may corrupt judges, may seduce writers and preachers and teachers and others who have to do with the making of public sentiment and the shaping of social values. And, in subtler ways, through the social prestige which their mere wealth too often gives, through the ideals which they themselves honestly feel, and communicate to those about them, do they create values opposing the values making for a juster distribution of wealth. Infinitely complex is the situation, many and varied are the values, which reinforce each other, oppose each other, and come into equilibrium with each other, in a given moment in the social will.

Older egoistic theories of political economy, which a.s.sumed perfect freedom of compet.i.tion, and gloried in the "harmonies" which result therefrom, whereby the interests of the individuals and of society converge, and the maximum of social welfare is attained by the individual's attaining his own interests--these theories have been much attacked of late by those who accept the premise of egoism, but reject the premise of freedom. To them economic "friction" means simply an opportunity for the strong to prey upon the weak, and the social outlook is gloomy indeed. The harmonies are shattered and gone. If we reject the other premise also, however, as necessarily a dominant principle, the outlook is changed or may be changed.

It is true that there are ignorance, helplessness, and pa.s.sions among men, and that wolves prey. But it is also true that there are forces of righteousness alert and militant in the world, not merely in the pulpit and cloister and missionary field. And the struggle between these contending forces is pregnant with implications for value theory. An astute corporation lawyer argues before a court; an honest attorney-general defends the rights of the people; and the ticker on 'Change records whether right or wrong has prevailed. Prices are big with the moral tidings they would speak--shall we read in them only mathematical ratios between quant.i.ties of physical objects?

It is by turning, then, to the concrete whole of social-mental life, and especially to the moral and legal values of distribution, that we break the circle[176] of our economic values. Economics has failed to profit by the example of the other social sciences here. Ethics has frankly recognized the tremendous import of economic values for ethical values. Jurisprudence has frankly accepted the fact that law grows, in large part, out of economic needs--even though it remains behind the needs of the present economic situation. But economic theory has sought to make itself too much a thing apart, to isolate its phenomena from other phases of social life, and has busied itself exclusively with "utility" and "cost" and "prices,"

and the like. And where the economist has consented to consider the relations between his own field and adjacent fields, he has done so with a preconception of the priority of his own phenomena, and his results have been an "economic" interpretation of history, ethics, jurisprudence, etc.

That the economic interpretation of the other fields has much to commend it is certain, but it is equally certain that law and morality react on economic values, especially in the higher stages of civilization. This has been so fully and convincingly stated by Professor Seligman, in his _Economic Interpretation of History_, that I forego further elaboration here. One comment is necessary however: even though we might grant Marx and Buckle that the physical environment and the progress of economic technique are of ultimate ruling significance for the direction of social progress, it is still a far cry from that doctrine to the doctrine that the "utilities" and "costs" directly connected with the production and consumption of economic goods, in the minds of individual men, are an adequate explanation of anything.

Were we interested in ethical and political values for their own sake, it would be easy to show that our conception of the nature of society and of social values has a similar significance for politics and ethics. There is no one distinctive emotion, as fear, or the love of domination, that lies at the basis of the state; there is no one emotion, as sympathy, or the love of pleasure, which const.i.tutes the essence of the moral values, nor is there any single type of mental activity, as imitation, or consciousness of kind, which furnishes the peculiar theme of sociology. Social life is not in water-tight compartments. It is one whole, of which the different sciences study different aspects. And the principle of division of labor among the social sciences is not that one science shall offer one theory of society and another science another theory, but rather, that each science shall take as its problem a phase of society, and explain it by reference to a general set of facts which all have in common. The differentiation comes not in the _explanation_ phenomena[177]--no science has any monopoly on any set of forces which may be used for the purpose of explanation--but in the phenomena to be explained, in the _problem_ phenomena.[178]

FOOTNOTES:

[175] _Vide_ Ross, _Foundations of Sociology_, chapter on the "Sociological Frontier of Economics," and Tarde, _Psychologie economique_, _pa.s.sim_.

[176] It may be objected that instead of "breaking the circle," we have simply widened it--that economic values, working through other forms of value, affect other economic values still. In a sense, of course, this is true. In any truly _organic_ situation, we have the phenomenon of _reciprocal causation_. An organic situation _must_ be circular in this sense. The parts are _inter_dependent. And our objection to the theories criticized is based on the fact that they are essentially efforts to describe a process in _rectilinear causation_--in the case of the Austrians, _e.g._, the process is _from_ subjective utility, _to_ objective value of consumption goods, then _to_ the values of the production goods of the nearest rank, and then on and on to goods of remoter ranks, etc.

Bohm-Bawerk recognizes very well that the charge of circular reasoning, if it could be brought home to the Austrians, would vitiate their system.

_Vide_ "Grundzuge," Conrad's _Jahrbucher_, 1886, p. 516. And Professor Clark likewise recognizes that value theory of the sort he is treating is spoiled by circular reasoning, as indicated by his criticism of a certain form of the labor theory in his _Distribution of Wealth_, p. 397. Whenever a small set of abstractions is picked out, as _the source_ and _cause_ of the rest of a movement, such a process of rectilinear causation is implied.

And a rectilinear process has no right to get into a circle!

[177] Pareto, in the introductory chapter of his _Cours d'economie Politique_, defines economics in terms of the narrow abstraction which he has chosen for the explanation phenomenon, as the "science of ophelimity"

(p. 6), and ophelimity is "an entirely subjective quality" (p. 4). There are two objections to this procedure: you neither completely explain your problem phenomena, nor do you exhaust the possibilities of your explanation phenomena--for the same sort of mental facts have bearing on ethical and other social problems as well as on economic problems.

[178] I am indebted to Professor E. C. Hayes, of the Department of Sociology of the University of Illinois, for this distinction.

CHAPTER XV

SOME MECHANICAL a.n.a.lOGIES

It may help the exposition if we throw the argument, briefly, into terms of the more familiar mechanical a.n.a.logies, and speak of the equilibria and transformations of social forces. Of course, mechanical a.n.a.logies have been used from time to time already in our discussion--psychologists themselves often find it useful to conceive of their phenomena in mechanical terms.

And while, in the exposition, we shall find frequent reason to prefer our plan of conceiving society as a psychical organism, and the social forces as phases in an organic process, still certain relations may be clearer for being put into the other form.

Social values may be transformed into other forms of social value--as heat may be transformed into electricity, or into motion, or motion into heat, etc. Professor Clark, with his distinction between "capital" and "capital goods," has shown how economic value may undergo constant transformation, as to its physical embodiment, and yet remain generically the same. But the possibilities of transformation are not confined to the economic sphere. We may generalize the notion. A man may use economic value to attain political power; having the political power, he may use it to get economic value back again, by direct barter and sale, if he wishes to take bribes, or by subtler, but still all too familiar means. Or, the political power may be transformed into personal prestige, if used in ways that please those whose good will means prestige. And personal influence--"live human power" (in Professor Cooley's phrase),[179] may be transformed into values of numerous sorts, into political power, into moral values--if he who has it wishes to make a propaganda--into prestige for other men, into economic value--for cannot an inspiring man command the purses of others in behalf of his plans and purposes? And may not popular confidence in a great statesman or financier in times of panic cause fears to be allayed, and values to return to goods that had lost their value? A man who has goods for which no demand exists, and which have, hence, little value, may, employing those who possess the art of creating demand to make public opinion for him by advertising, find his investment, transformed into public belief and interest, return to him a golden harvest. A religious value may flow into the economic value of religious books. A moral or religious value may be transformed into a law. A legal value--as a franchise right[180]--has often a definitely recognized economic value as well. Economic value, spent in an educational campaign, may result in the establishment of a new moral or legal value. And so on indefinitely. Enough has been said to show that there is some sort of a.n.a.logy between social and physical forces, in that both can be transformed into other forms of force. The a.n.a.logy might be pushed further. It is often difficult to make the transformation in both cases--there's lots of "friction" if a man starts out publicly and brazenly to buy a political office, and a great deal of waste in the process. But enough has also been said to show the weakness of such an a.n.a.logy: in creating personal prestige through the wise use of his political power, an officer may actually increase, instead of exhausting, his political power.

Or, in the moment of attempting certain transformations, the original power may be suddenly wiped out--as if a great political leader should undertake to popularize some form of immorality. There is no law of equivalence, of conservation of energy, in social forces. Their nature and their relations are organic, and not mechanical.

Or, we may speak of equilibria among social forces. Economists have for a long time been used to this, speaking of equilibria between supply and demand, between labor and capital, between enterprise and the other factors of production, between intensive and extensive margins, etc. But we may also have equilibria between, say, demand and moral values, as when moral forces oppose the consumption of liquor, or between supply and law, as in the case where regulation, rather than total suppression, of certain vicious businesses is the practice, or where the effort at total suppression falls short. And equilibria between enterprise and law and morals are being constantly worked out--entrepreneurs seeking to produce at the minimum expense, even at the cost of the lives and health of their employees, and law and morals[181] drawing limits beyond which they must not go, with a struggle between them at the margin--and the money prices of the products reflect the marginal equilibrium attained. Supply may be in equilibrium with a protective tariff, or an internal revenue excise--legal values which the economists have long been accustomed to treat quant.i.tatively by the laws of incidence, and whose strength they measure in terms of money prices.[182] Not "utility and cost," but an infinite complex of social forces are in equilibrium in the economic situation.

And the social forces in equilibrium at focal points are themselves composites of many forces, cooperating and reinforcing each other, each of these forces having its own equilibria with other minor forces--a net resultant sending the unneutralized energy of both in a common direction, to form part of a bigger stream of energy. "Demand" is a stream of energy fed by many springs, among which, no doubt, individual wants for the good in question are to be found, but which include the legal and moral values of _men_, also, and an infinite host of other forces.

And, just as one form of physical energy may be subst.i.tuted for another, under different systems of technique, electricity taking the place of steam power, steam doing the work formerly done by horse or human power, so, in particular forms of social organization, one form of social force may do the work that is better done by some other form of social force under a different form of social organization. Thus the regulation of the details of conduct, a matter of iron law (or of custom with the force of law) in certain stages, we now leave to the control of subtler social forces. At one stage we depend on religious values, the curse and the benediction of the church, as a tremendously vital power in social control; now we find other modes of social energy frequently more efficacious. Now we depend primarily on economic social values, under a compet.i.tive system, to motivate the economic activities of society, to determine whether this piece of land shall be planted in wheat, or in some other crop, or fertilized in this or that manner; in the mediaeval English manor, many questions like these were settled by vote of the manor court.