Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive. Benjamin M. Anderson
i.e. must have a common quality, present in each in definite quantitative degree, before comparison is possible, or a ratio can emerge. This quality is value. The difficulty, from the standpoint of logic, is only covered up, and not avoided, if we say with Professor Davenport,[28] "Value is a ratio of exchange between two goods, quantitatively specified." [Italics mine.] For the quantitative specification depends on the extent to which the homogeneous quality is present in each of the goods, or, if we assume that the quantitative specification is made before the question of exchange ratio is raised, then the exchange ratio will vary with the extent to which the common quality is present in each of the goods. We can have no quantitative ratios between unlike things. And yet, we must have terms for our ratios. The situation here is not unlike the situation that arises when we compare two weights. We have no unit of weight in the abstract. Weight never appears as an isolated quality, but always along with other qualities, as extension, color, and the like. And when we compare weights, we really compare two heavy objects, and make our weight ratio between the object to be weighed and the physical standard of weight. Nor does value ever appear as an isolated quality. And we have no unit of abstract value which we can apply abstractly in a measurement. Instead, we choose some valuable object, as 23.22 grains of gold, and make our ratio between the given quantity of gold and the object whose value we wish to measure. But we must not forget that this is merely a symbol, a convenient mode of expression, and that the fact expressed is something different—that the real terms of our ratios are so many units of abstract weight, or of abstract value, as the case may be. Otherwise conceived, the ratio itself is meaningless: it has no terms. We have four to one up in the air, not four units of something to one unit of something. The abstract ratio is a thing for pure mathematics, and not a thing for economics. An economic ratio must have "economic quantities" as terms.[29]
The difficulty with the doctrine we are maintaining arises from the difficulty of isolating and defining this quality of value. It is not a quality "inherent" in the good (whatever "inherent" may mean). It does not arise from the simple relation between our senses and the object, or even from an intellectual elaboration thereof. It rather grows out of the relation between our emotional-volitional life and the object, and the definition of this relation, and the determination of the quality, have been so difficult, that some writers, as Professor Davenport,[30] have explicitly given it up as a hopeless task, and have determined to content themselves with the surface facts of relativity. But there is no logical resting place in those surface facts. Relativity implies things related, ratios must have quantitative terms, additions require homogeneous quantities to make up a sum.
Some further distinctions are necessary. When we say "absolute magnitude," we do not mean a magnitude which stands out of all relations to other facts in the universe. There is no intention of setting up a metaphysical absolute here. The terms "positive" and "relative" (suggested by Professor Taylor)[31] might serve our purpose better, except for the fact that we wish to reserve the term "positive value" to contrast with "negative value" at a later stage of our discussion. Our objection to the relative conception of value really gives our value more, rather than less relations. Instead of allowing its relation to one particular thing, namely, some other good with which it happens to be compared, to determine its amount, we insist that that relation is so much a minor matter that it can generally be ignored, and that the significant relations—a very numerous set of relations indeed, as we shall later see!—are of another sort. The contention is that value is absolute only in this sense: its amount is not determined by the particular exchange ratio in which it happens to be put, and is not changed eo ipso every time a new comparison is made.
Further, it is in the process of exchange, and by the method of comparison, that the value of goods becomes quantitatively known, as a rule. That is to say, we find out precisely how much value a good has by comparing it in exchange with some other good. In this respect, value is again like other qualities. We measure lengths, weights, cubic contents of objects, all by comparison, direct or indirect, with other objects. But the amount of water in a vessel is not changed when we put it into a measure, and determine how many gallons of it there are. Nor is the amount of value in a good causally determined by the process of exchange.[32] We must distinguish between two confused meanings of the word "determine." It may mean "to cause," and it may mean "to find out" or "to measure." We must distinguish, in Kantian phrase, between the "ratio essendi" and the "ratio cognoscendi." Value and evaluation are two distinct things. Value, to anticipate a later part of the study, is primary, and grows out of the action of the volitional-emotional side of human-social life; evaluation is secondary, and is the intellectual process devoted, not to giving value, but to finding out how much value there is in a good. This distinction between the existence of a quantity, and our precise knowledge of its amount, is brought out by several writers, among them, General F. A. Walker,[33] and the keen mathematical economists, Pareto[34] and Edgeworth.[35]
There are two further arguments for the propriety of this conception, considered primarily as a question of terminology, to be drawn from usage in the treatment of other terms. The first is drawn from a consideration of the function of the value concept in economic science,[36] and of its relation to the concept of wealth. "The notion of value is to our science what that of energy is to mechanics," says Jevons.[37] It is clear that a mere abstract ratio, which Jevons two pages later declares value to be, cannot serve such a purpose. Abstract ratios are subject-matter for mathematics, not for economics. "Wealth and value differ as substance and attribute," (Senior, quoted with approval by F. A. Walker.[38]) With this view, Marx[39] would concur. "Wealth is that which has value," Professor Laughlin states.[40] Clearly a qualitative attribute, and not a ratio, must be indicated here, even though Professor Laughlin elsewhere in the book defines value as a "ratio between two objective articles."[41] And if we take a definition like that of Professor Seligman, who defines wealth in terms which entirely ignore the ideas of comparison and exchange as consisting of those things which are (1) capable of satisfying desire, (2) external to man, and (3) limited in supply,[42] we find no basis for insisting on relativity, exchange and comparison, as essential to the idea of value, which is the essential and distinguishing characteristic of wealth. The science loses in coherency from this diversity of definition. The second argument is similar. Current economic usage speaks of money as a "measure" of values. Professor Seligman uses the expression in the chapter on money in the book referred to. But the point made by General Walker against this expression, when value is defined as a ratio, is absolutely valid. He says:—
I apprehend that this notion of money serving as a common measure of value is wholly fanciful; indeed, the very phrase seems to represent a misconception. Value is a relation. Relations may be expressed, but not measured. You cannot measure the relation of a mile to a furlong; you express it as 8:1.[43]
Only on the basis of a definition of value as a quantity is it proper to speak of a "measure of values."[44]
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