The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
If, in our diagram above, we substitute for "social mind" the more
general expression, "human factor," we should find that our value
concept is the common property of many writers. We should find it
fitting in with the absolute value notion of Adam Smith and of
Ricardo.[11] The "human factor" which _explains_ the absolute value is,
for them, labor. We should find it fitting in with the "socially
necessary labor time" of Marx: the value of a bushel of wheat is the
amount of labor time which, on the _average_, is required to produce a
bushel of wheat. It is an absolute value. It is a causal coefficient
with the absolute value, similarly explained, of the bushel of corn, in
explaining the wheat-price of corn. Our concept will fit in exactly with
the "social use-value" of Carl Knies, according to whom the economic
value of a good in society is an _average_ of its varying use-values to
different individuals in the market. This average is an absolute
quantity. The absolute values of units of two goods, thus explained,
causally fix the exchange ratio between the goods. Knies' value-theory,
it may be noticed, is explicitly modeled on that of Marx, to whom he
refers, the difference being that Knies takes an average of individual
use-values, while Marx takes an average of individual labor-times, as
the causal explanation.[12] Our value concept will fit perfectly with
Professor J. B. Clark's "social marginal utility" theory of value.
Indeed, the present writer gratefully acknowledges that the concept is
Professor Clark's rather than his own, and that all that is necessary
for its explanation has been set forth by Professor Clark.[13]
Professor Clark's _causal_ theory of value, his explanation of this
absolute quantity of value as a _sum_ of individual marginal utilities,
we have elsewhere[14] criticised as involving circular reasoning, like
all marginal utility theories, in so far as they offer causal
explanations. But his statement of the logical character of value, of
the relation of value to wealth, of value to price, of value to
exchange, of the functions of the value concept in economic theory, and
of the functions of value in economic life,--Clark's doctrines on these
points we have accepted bodily, and in so far as the present writer has
added anything to them it has been by way of elaboration and defence.
The concept of value here developed is explicitly adopted by T. S.
Adams, David Kinley, W. A. Scott, W. G. L. Taylor, L. S. Merriam, and A.
S. Johnson, among American writers, to name no others. All of these
writers would concur in the formal and logical considerations[15] as to
the nature of value here presented, whatever differences might appear
among them as to the causal explanation of value.
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