The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
philosophy of a humanity which transcends the limits of a given
state,[22]--a notion which tended to free the individual from dependence
on his immediate associates. But note that in all this we have merely a
widening and multiplying of social relationships, and that the
individual gains freedom from one set of social relationships only by
coming into others. The Christian gains freedom from his immediate
surroundings because he feels himself in communion with "angels and
archangels and all the glorious company of Heaven." Francis Bacon could
survive his degradation in the England of his day because he could leave
his "name and memory ... to foreign nations and to the next age."
Bagehot, in his _Physics and Politics_, Tarde, and Baldwin, to name no
others,[23] have shown how tremendously responsive human beings are to
suggestion, how wide is the sway of imitation in human life, how
fashion, mode, custom, etc., make and mold the individual. Cooley,[24]
with an improved psychology, has amplified the analysis, tracing the
development of the individual mind in interaction with the minds of
those about him, making still clearer the sweep and pervasiveness of
social factors in framing the very self of the individual. In what
follows, I assume the results of these investigations. They constitute
the starting point from which we set out on the quest of a theory of
economic value.
So much for the individual. He is a social product. But what of society?
Objective, external, constraining and impelling forces, which are not
physical, which are seemingly not the products of the will of other
individuals with whom the individual holds converse, meet the individual
on every hand. There is the Moral Law, sacred and majestic, which stands
above him, demanding the sacrifice of many of his impulses and desires.
There is the Law, external to him and to his fellows, in seeming,
failure to obey which may ruin his life. There is Public Opinion, which
presents itself to him as an opaque, impersonal force, before which he
must bow, and which he feels quite powerless to change. There are
Economic Values ruling in the market place, directing industry in its
changing from one sort of production to another, bringing prosperity to
one individual and bankruptcy to another, not with the caprice of an
individual will, but with the remorseless impersonality of wind and
tide. He who conforms to them, who anticipates their mutations, gains
great wealth--but no business man dare set his personal values against
them. There are great Institutions, Church and State and Courts and
Professions and giant Corporations and Political Parties, and
multitudinous other less formal or smaller institutions, which go on in
continuous life, though the men who act within them pass and change.
Their Life seems an independent life, and the individual who tries to
change their course finds that his efforts mean little indeed, as a
rule.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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