I do not desire, at the outset of a comparatively short book, to anticipate my arguments in detail, but a statement of the plan of procedure may aid the exposition somewhat. I shall first, through an examination of the logical necessities of economic theory, and of the function of the value concept in economics, set up certain logical and formal qualifications for an adequate value concept. Then I shall examine the efforts made by current theories of value to attain such a value concept, by means of the elements of individual utilities, individual costs, or combinations of the two, and show that such procedure gets into invincible logical difficulties. We shall find the source of these difficulties in the faulty epistemology, psychology, and sociology which constitute the avowed or implicit presuppositions of the economic theory of to-day. Criticizing these faulty presuppositions, we shall endeavor to reconstruct them in the light of later epistemological, psychological, and sociological doctrine, and then, on the basis of the new presuppositions, we shall endeavor to develop a truly organic doctrine of social value, and to link it with what seems valuable--that is to say, the greater part--in the economic theory of to-day. FOOTNOTES: [1] The value concept of Marx is not, strictly speaking, a social value concept. _Cf._ Pareto, V., _Cours d'Economie Politique_, vol. I, p. 32. Rodbertus, however, has a doctrine of social use value, based on the organic conception of society. "Nemlich so: es gibt nur Eine Art Werth und das ist der Gebrauchswerth.... Aber dieser Eine Gebrauchswerth ist entweder individueller Gebrauchswerth oder _socialer_ Gebrauchswerth.... Der zweite ist der Gebrauchswerth, den ein aus vielen individuellen Organismen bestehender _socialer Organismus_ hat.... Damit glaube ich also bewiesen zu haben, dass der Tauschwerth nur der historische Um- und Anhang des socialen Gebrauchswerths aus einer bestimmten Geschichtsperiode ist. Indem man also dem Gebrauchswerth einen Tauschwerth als logischen Gegensatz gegenueber stellt, stellt man zu einem logischen Begriff einen historischen Begriff in logischem Gegensatz, was logisch nicht angeht." From a letter to Adolph Wagner, published by Wagner in the _Zeitschrift fuer die Gesammte Staatswissenschaft_, 1878, pp. 223-24. Wagner indicates his approval of this concept, though he makes little use of it, in his _Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie_, Leipzig, 1892, pp. 329-30. Ingram, in his _History of Political Economy_ (New York, 1888), although he takes no account of social value theories of other writers, suggests one of his own--which is, however, a vague one, mixing technological, ethical, and economic categories. See p. 241.