Social Value
Chapter 11: Recapitulation. The Social Values.
Functions of the Value Concept in Economics
Benjamin McAlester Anderson Jr.
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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 constitute 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 constitute 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 tre-
(116) -mendously complex, including individual values in the minds of many men, as well as other factors which we shall have to analyze 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 naive and unreflective experience the feelings with such objectivity of reference are spoken of as predicates of the objects themselves.[1]
And our theory carries us even further than Professor Urban cares to go here. Naive 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 mass of men, and the great mass of commodities, this holds true. The individual finds the world of
(117) 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 constitute 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![2] 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.[3] That
(118) 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 analysis of the necessities of economic theory. Economic value as a quality, present in a good in definite, quantitative 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 homogeneous 'element in them by virtue of which the addition can be made. We do not add a crop of wheat and a lead-pencil,[4] 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 homogeneous 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 homogeneous quality. We have no terms for our ratios apart from quantities 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 quantitative degrees. A point or two may be added. We find economists, notably the
(119) Austrians, undertaking the problem of " Imputation," breaking up the value of a consumption good into different parts, one part being assigned 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 quantity 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 analysis this conception of value has been essential for the validity of the analysis, 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 quantities 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
(120) upon to explain the motivation of the economic activity of society, and value has been conceived of as a motivating force.[5] 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 labortime would get supply and needs into a hopeless discrepancy.[6]
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 [7] serve these purposes of the economists. Value as a mere brute quantity 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
(121) English School so often uses as the equivalent of value, namely, "purchasing power" [8] - a term which Bohm-Bawerk approves.[9] 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 quantitative character of value, even though often confusedly and vaguely, seems very much to strengthen the case for the thesis I am maintaining.[10]
The effort of the Austrians, and of other schools of economic theory, to explain and justify this notion of value as an objective quantity, has already been considered, and our conclusion has been that, through a too narrow delimitation
(122) 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 quantity, 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 quantity 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 assumed and used the quantitative 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 analyze it, picking out certain prominent and significant
(123) 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.
