Social Value Part 8

_Jour. of Philosophy_, etc., Sept., 1909; Montague, W. P., "The True, the Good and the Beautiful, from a Pragmatic Standpoint," _Ibid._, April 29, 1909; Meinong, A., _Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie_, Graz, 1894; Paulsen, Friedrich, _Introduction to Philosophy_, and _System of Ethics_; Stuart, H. W., "The Hedonistic Interpretation of Subjective Value," _Jour. of Pol. Econ._, vol. IV, "Valuation as a Logical Process,"

in Dewey's _Studies in Logical Theory_, Chicago, 1903; Shaw, C. C., "The Theory of Value, and its Place in the History of Ethics," _International Jour. of Ethics_, vol. XI; Slater, T., "Value in Moral Theology and Political Economy," _Irish Eccles. Rec._, ser. 4, vol. X, Dublin, 1901; Tufts, J. H., "Ethical Value," _Jour. of Philosophy_, etc., vol. XIX; Baldwin's _Dictionary of Philosophy_, etc., _s. v._ "Worth" (article by W.

M. Urban); Simmel, G., _Philosophie des Geldes_, Leipzig, 1900, "A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value," _Amer. Jour. of Sociology_, vol. V; Urban, W.

M., _Valuation_, London, 1909. These t.i.tles are representative of an extensive literature on the subject.

[121] _Supra_, p. 19, n.

[122] I am indebted to Professor John Dewey for many valuable suggestions and criticisms in connection with this part of my study. My more general obligations to him will be manifest to any one who is familiar with his epoch-marking point of view. Economic, sociological and political philosophy have, in my judgment, more to learn from him than from any other contemporary philosopher.

[123] Pp. 141-42.

[124] _Cf._ Gabriel Tarde, _Psychologie economique_, vol. I, p. 63, and Urban, _Valuation_, p. 78.

[125] Urban, _op. cit._, p. 32.

[126] Paulsen, Friedrich, _Ethics_, _pa.s.sim_.

[127] _System der Werttheorie_, vol. I, chap. I.

[128] _Op. cit._, p. 311.

[129] _Cf._ Urban, _op. cit._, p. 36; Meinong, _op. cit._, pp. 15-16.

[130] Meinong, _op. cit._, pt. I, chap. I; Urban, _op. cit._, pp. 38-39.

[131] _Op. cit._, pp. 14-16, and following chapter.

[132] Urban, _op. cit._, p. 39.

[133] _Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie_, Graz, 1894, pt. I, chap. I, esp. p. 21.

[134] "La psychologie en economie politique," _Revue Philosophique_, vol.

XII, pp. 337-38.

[135] _Op. cit._, pp. 41 _et seq._

[136] See chapter XVI, _infra_.

[137] The German, with its facility in compounding, offers a convenient nomenclature here: _Wert_ and _Unwert_. _Cf._ Ehrenfels, _op. cit._, for a brief discussion of negative values (pp. 53-54).

[138] For this generalization, see Urban, _op. cit._, chap. VI; Ehrenfels, _op. cit._, vol. II, chap. III, esp. p. 86.

[139] An a.n.a.logue in the field of social values is readily suggested. A new heresy starts, opposed by the dominant element in the social will, _i.e._, having a negative value for the majority. As the heresy increases, the negative value rises till, in a crucial point, the tide turns, and the heretics become the dominant element in the society. Then--since their position is far from certain--new recruits to the heresy have a high positive value, but, as the heresy still further spreads, additional recruits count for less and less.

[140] _Cf._ Urban, _op. cit._, _pa.s.sim_; Ehrenfels, _op. cit._, vol. I, pp.

43 _et seq._; Mackenzie, criticism of Ehrenfels and Meinong in _Mind_, Oct., 1899. _Cf._ also, Wicksteed, _The Common Sense of Political Economy_, London, 1910, pp. 402 _et seq._

[141] The generalization of the idea of price, while not original with Wicksteed, is interestingly developed by him in chaps. I and II of his _Common Sense of Political Economy_, London, 1910.

[142] Davenport, _op. cit._, pp. 303-11, gives a good summary of economic discussions of hedonism. His own view is that the Austrians are not essentially bound up with hedonism.

[143] _Supra_, chaps. VI and VII.

CHAPTER XI

RECAPITULATION. THE SOCIAL VALUES. FUNCTIONS OF THE VALUE CONCEPT IN ECONOMICS

Our conclusions reached in previous chapters, from the standpoint of economic theory, and from the standpoint of sociological theory, alike forbid us to stop with the results so far obtained as to the nature of value. From the standpoint of social theory, we are unable to consider the individual values discussed in the last chapter as completely accounted for on the psychical side by what goes on in the individual mind: every individual mind is a part of a larger whole; every thing in the individual mind has been influenced by processes in the minds of others; every process in the individual mind influences, directly or indirectly, processes in the minds of others. There is a social mind. And the values in the mind of an individual const.i.tute no self-complete and independent system, either in their origin, in their interactions, or in their consequences for action.

In our psychological phrase, their "presuppositions" include elements in the minds of other men, and they themselves const.i.tute part of the "presuppositions" of the values in the minds of other men. Finally, there are values which correspond to the values of no individual mind, great social values, whose presuppositions are tremendously complex, including individual values in the minds of many men, as well as other factors which we shall have to a.n.a.lyze in considerable detail, great social values whose motivating power directs the activities of nations, of great industries, of literary and artistic "schools," of churches and other social organizations, as well as the daily lives of every man and woman--impelling them in paths which no individual man foresaw or purposed. In Urban's phrase,--

between the subjectively desired and the objectively desirable in ethics, between subjective utility and sacrifice and objective value and price in economic reckoning, between the subjectively effective and the objectively beautiful in art, there is a difference for feeling so potent that in nave and unreflective experience the feelings with such objectivity of reference are spoken of as predicates of the objects themselves.[144]

And our theory carries us even further than Professor Urban cares to go here. Nave and unreflecting experience is perfectly justified in treating these objective values as qualities of the objects themselves. To the individual man, an objective value, say the value of an economic good, _is_ as a rule, a quality almost wholly independent of his personal subjective feelings or point of view. The average man, "by taking thought," can no more affect the value of wheat or corn or other big staple than he can "add a cubit to his stature." For the great ma.s.s of men, and the great ma.s.s of commodities, this holds true. The individual finds the world of economic values a part of the brute universe, like the force of gravity, or the weather, or the law against murder--less invariable than the force of gravity, and less variable, as a rule, than the weather--to which he must adapt his individual economy. He is not wholly impotent to change this world of economic values, nor is he wholly without influence on the balance of cosmic forces. And, if possessed of enough social _power_ (which we shall find to const.i.tute the essence of these social values) he may substantially modify the action of the law against murder, or the values of those commodities about which the rich may be capricious; or even, if intelligent in the use of his power, he may undertake a successful "bull"

campaign, and force up the value of wheat or cotton. But even in such cases, he deals with objective facts,--which often, in the midst of a bull campaign, behave in a most surprising and disconcerting manner![145] The existence of external constraining and directive forces are matters of every day experience. Laws, moral values, social constraints of a thousand subtle and obvious kinds, are facts so well known that education has made it its central task to teach the individual how to adjust himself to them.

They have been described and elaborated in innumerable books.[146] _That_ they exist is certain. Their origin, nature and function we shall study in what is to follow.

We were led to a similar conclusion by the a.n.a.lysis of the necessities of economic theory. Economic value as a quality, present in a good in definite, quant.i.tative degree, regardless of the idiosyncrasy of the particular holder of the good, we found a necessity of economic thought.

The argument may be briefly recapitulated, and a few points added. If goods are to be added together and a sum of wealth obtained, there must be a h.o.m.ogeneous element in them by virtue of which the addition can be made. We do not add a crop of wheat and a lead-pencil,[147] and a gold watch, and twenty dollars and a theatre ticket, on the basis of length or weight or other physical quality. Only by picking out the h.o.m.ogeneous quality, value, can we add them. We cannot compare two economic goods, and put them into a ratio, except on the basis of such a h.o.m.ogeneous quality. We have no terms for our ratios apart from quant.i.ties of value, and yet our ratios must have terms. We find economists speaking of value as the essential characteristic or quality of wealth. We find theorists speaking of money as a "measure of values"--a conception only possible if value be a quality of the sort of which we speak, present both in the money measure and in the thing measured in definite quant.i.tative degrees. A point or two may be added. We find economists, notably the Austrians, undertaking the problem of "Imputation," breaking up the value of a consumption good into different parts, one part being a.s.signed to the labor immediately concerned in its production, and other parts of that value to goods of the next "rank"--owned by people different from those who consume the good--and this value further subdivided among goods of remoter ranks,--the whole process possible only if the original value be an objective quant.i.ty of the sort described. We find a differential portion of a crop of wheat compared with the land which produced it, and spoken of as a percentage of the land, which is true only if the _value_ of each be considered--and indeed is meaningless, else. Or, we find merchants reckoning their gains in the form of money at the end of the year, as a certain percentage of their capital--which has consisted throughout the year of goods of various sorts.

Everywhere in the economic a.n.a.lysis this conception of value has been essential for the validity of the a.n.a.lysis, and this is especially true when we come to the ultimate problems of monetary theory. We may ignore, sometimes, the element of value when dealing with non-monetary problems, in terms of quant.i.ties of money, simply because it is not necessary to refer to fundamental principles explicitly all the time. But when we come to the problem of money itself, we must make use of the value concept, and the value concept is implicit in the whole procedure.

Further, the value concept has been called upon to explain the motivation of the economic activity of society, and value has been conceived of as a motivating force.[148] Schaeffle, especially, has stressed this phase of the matter in his criticism of the socialistic theories of value. "Utility value," he holds, does direct industry into proper channels, but a value based on labor-time would get supply and needs into a hopeless discrepancy.[149]

No ratio "between objective articles" will serve these functions which the economists have put upon the value concept. Value as a purely individual phenomenon, varying from man to man, will in no way[150] serve these purposes of the economists. Value as a mere brute quant.i.ty of physical objects given in exchange for other physical objects, could in no way serve these purposes. Value must be an objective quality, a _power_, embodied in the object, independent of the individual judgment or desire. A strong feeling that this is so is manifested in the term which the English School so often uses as the equivalent of value, namely, "purchasing power"[151]--a term which Bohm-Bawerk approves.[152] The notion of relativity which has, historically, been bound up with this term, we have criticized in chapter II, and it is not necessary to repeat the argument here. But the other aspect of it, its recognition of the dynamic character of value, and of the quant.i.tative character of value, even though often confusedly and vaguely, seems very much to strengthen the case for the thesis I am maintaining.[153]

The effort of the Austrians, and of other schools of economic theory, to explain and justify this notion of value as an objective quant.i.ty, has already been considered, and our conclusion has been that, through a too narrow delimitation of their determinants, they have been led into circular reasoning. A further criticism is now possible, in the light of our sociological and psychological conclusions: the picking out of _any_ abstract elements, however numerous, with the effort, by a synthesis, to combine them into a concrete social quant.i.ty, must fail. In the process of abstraction we leave out vital elements of the concrete social situation; how shall we expect these vital elements left out to reappear when we put the abstract elements into a synthesis? They cannot, if the synthesis be logically made. And it is precisely because Professor Davenport is so accurate in his logic that he fails to get a social quant.i.ty out of the abstract elements of subjective utility, etc. But the majority of economists, less careful in their formal logic, but more impressed by the facts of social life and by the exigencies of getting a working set of concepts, have a.s.sumed and used the quant.i.tative concept, with satisfactory results so far as practical problems are concerned, but without fundamental theoretical consistency. The elements which the abstract theories suppress persist, under the guise of economic value itself, in the facts of life, and take their vengeance on the theory by forcing it into a circle. Our problem, then, is not to find out certain elements out of which to construct social value by a synthesis. The proper procedure will be the reverse of that: to take social value as we find it--i.e., as it _functions_ in economic life,--and then to a.n.a.lyze it, picking out certain prominent and significant phases, or moments, in it, which, taken abstractly, are not the whole story, but which furnish the criteria of social value, and control over which is significant for the purpose of controlling social values.

In subsequent chapters, we shall, carrying out this plan, try to put concrete meaning into our abstract formulation of the problem.

FOOTNOTES:

[144] _Op. cit._, p. 17.

[145] _Cf._ Royce, J., _The World and the Individual_, New York, 1901, vol.

I, pp. 209-10, and 225.

[146] I may refer here particularly to Durkheim, _De la division du travail social_, Paris, 1893. In giving this reference, of course, I do not commit myself to the "mediaeval realism" of which Durkheim has been, perhaps justly, accused. _Cf._, also, Professor Ross's admirable _Social Control_.

[147] _Cf._ Ely, _Outlines of Economics_, 1908 ed., pp. 99-100, and Tarde, _Psychologie economique_, vol. I, p. 85, n. See _supra_, chap. II.

[148] _Cf._ Wieser, _Natural Value_, pp. 65, 162-63, 210-12, and 36; Flux, _Economic Principles_, chap. II.

[149] _Quintessence of Socialism_, London, 1898, pp. 55-59, 91 _et seq._, 123-24.

[150] I take pleasure in availing myself of the privilege which Professor W. A. Scott, of the University of Wisconsin, accords me, of quoting him to the effect that "such a conception of value [a value concept which makes the value of a commodity a quant.i.ty, socially valid, regardless of the individual holder of the coin or the commodity, and regardless of the particular exchange ratio into which the value quant.i.ty enters as a term]

is absolutely essential to the working-out of economic problems." Professor Scott has been driven to this conclusion in the course of his studies in the theory of money. Dean Kinley expresses a somewhat similar view in his _Money_, p. 62. It is, of course, in the theory of money that the need for such a concept makes itself most acutely felt. But the same view is expressed by Professor T. S. Adams, from the standpoint of the statistician. See his article, "Index Numbers and the Standard of Value,"

_Jour. of Pol. Econ._, vol. X, 1901-02, pp. 11 and 18-19.