Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive. Benjamin M. Anderson

Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive - Benjamin M. Anderson


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difference is verbal, for present purposes, at least), must be so considered. A ratio of exchange, then, is a ratio between two quantities of social marginal utility, or social value, rather than between two physical objects, and price, in this view, is a particular sort of ratio of exchange, namely, one where one of the terms of the ratio is the social marginal utility, or the social value, of the money unit.

      It is important to contrast value as thus conceived, in its formal and logical aspects, with other historical conceptions of value. In the classification which follows, the writer has by no means attempted an exhaustive list. Definitions of value are very numerous, but it is not necessary to list them all, since many differ, not so much in their logical or formal aspects, as in the theory of the origin of value which the definition is made to include. There are two principles of classification which will be used, however, which, used in a cross-classification, will enable us to exhibit the contrasts of most importance for present purposes.

      

      Value is a quality which we attribute to things, like color, but which, like color, exists only in ourselves.... This quality is of that peculiar species of qualities which present numerical degrees, and mount or descend a scale without essentially changing their nature, and hence merit the name of quantities.

      

      Theorists who have confined themselves to the examination of exchange value, or, what comes to the same thing, of price, may have succeeded in discovering certain empirical laws of changes in amounts of value, but they could never unfold the real nature of value, and discover its true measure. As regards these questions, so long as examination was confined to exchange value, it was impossible to get beyond the formula that value lies in the relation of exchange;—that everything is so much more valuable the more of other things it can be exchanged for.... Absolutely and by itself, value was not to be understood. It is significant of this conception to state that one thing cannot be an object of value in itself; that a second must be present before the first can be valued.

      Theory has only very gradually shaken itself free from this misconception, this circle. Where an absolute theory was attempted—such as the labour theory, or that which explained value as usefulness—some logical leap generally reconnected it with the relative conception.


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