Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy
John Stuart Mill · en
Levasseur(196) regards value as “the relation resulting from
exchange”—_le rapport resultant de l’échange_. Cherbuliez(197)
asserts that “the value of a product or of a service can be
expressed only as the products or services which it obtains in
exchange.... If I exchange the thing A against B, A is the value
of B, B is the value of A.” Jevons(198) defines value as
“proportion in exchange.”
§ 2. Conditions of Value: Utility, Difficulty of Attainment, and
Transferableness.
That a thing may have any value in exchange, two conditions are necessary.
1. It must be of some use; that is (as already explained), it must conduce
to some purpose, satisfy some desire. No one will pay a price, or part
with anything which serves some of his purposes, to obtain a thing which
serves none of them. 2. But, secondly, the thing must not only have some
utility, there must also be some difficulty in its attainment.
The question is one as to the conditions essential to the
existence of any value. Very justly Cairnes(199) adds also a third
condition, “the possibility of transferring the possession of the
articles which are the subject of the exchange.” For instance, a
cargo of wheat at the bottom of the sea has value in use and
difficulty of attainment, but it is not transferable. Jevons
(following J. B. Say) maintains that “value depends entirely on
utility.” If utility means the power to satisfy a desire, things
which merely have utility and no difficulty of attainment could
have no exchange value.(200) F. A. Walker(201) believes that
“value depends wholly on the relation between demand and supply.”
Carey(202) holds that value depends merely on the cost of
reproduction of the given article. Roscher(203) finds that
exchange value is “based on a combination of value in use with
cost value.” Cherbuliez(204) calls the conditions of value two,
“the ability to give satisfaction, and inability of attainment
without effort. The first element is subjective; it is determined
wholly by the needs or desires of the parties to the exchange. The
second is objective; it depends upon material considerations,
which are the conditions of the existence of the thing, and upon
which the needs of the persons exchanging have no influence
whatever.” It is, as usual, one of Cherbuliez’s clear expositions.
A. L. Perry(205) states that, “while value always takes its rise
in the _desires_ of men, it is never realized except through the
_efforts_ of men, and through these efforts as mutually
exchanged.”