The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
There are, similarly, three types of economic theory. At the one extreme
we have theories of "intrinsic" value, which would place economic value
outside the wills of men. The mediaeval discussions of "just price" often
illustrate this notion. It creeps not infrequently into judicial
opinions,--to which such notions are essentially congenial! The working
economist of our own day has found little use for it, but in periods
when economic change was slow it suggested itself not unnaturally to
men, as an explanation of the seeming impersonality of market phenomena,
and as a practical idea for combatting extortion and injustice.
Something of the idea is involved in a sentence of Shakspere's:[29]
"But value dwells not in particular will;
It holds his estimate and dignity
As well wherein 'tis precious of itself
As in the prizer."
At the opposite extreme would be those economists, as Professor
Davenport and Jevons, who find no value for a good except in the minds
of individual men, so that there may be as many different values as
there are different men. That something social and objective exists in
the market place can hardly be denied, but when pressed for an account
of it, these writers reduce it to a bare, abstract, mathematical
ratio.[30] Each individual mind is shut up within its own limits,
inscrutable to other minds, and there can be no psychological phenomena
which include activities in many minds, for this view. In between these
two extremes, is the social value theory of the present writer. Economic
value is not intrinsic in goods, independent of the minds of men. But it
is a fact which is in large degree independent of the mind of any given
man. To a given individual in the market, the economic value of a good
is a fact as external, as objective, as opaque and stubborn, as is the
weight of the object, or the law against murder. There are individual
values, marginal utilities, of goods which may differ in magnitude and
in quality from man to man, but there is, over and above these,
influenced by them in part, influencing them much more than they
influence it, a social value for each commodity, a product of a complex
social psychology, which includes the individual values, but includes
very much more as well. Our theory puts law, moral values, and economic
values in the same general class, _species_ of the _genus_, social
value, alike in their psychological "stuff" and character, to be
explained by the same general principles, even though differentiated in
their functions, and in the extent to which they depend on various
factors in the social situation. They are parts of a social system of
motivation and control. They are the _social forces_, which govern, in a
social scheme, the actions of men.
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