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[15] Clark, J. B., "Ultimate Standard of Value," Yale Review, 1892. p. 258.

[16] E.g., The Philosophy of Wealth, chap. v.

[17] Economics, p. 92. See also the article by President Hadley on "Value" in Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy, etc., and "Misunderstandings about Economic Terms," Yale Review, vol. iv, pp. 156-70. The same ideas are expressed in all.

[18] Some of my socialist friends object to the interpretation of Marx given above. I feel strengthened in my position here by finding the same view expressed by Conrad in his Grundriss, etc., 4te Aufl, Bd. i, pp. 17-18. Professor O. D. Skelton's admirable Socialism (Hart, Schaffner & Marx Series, 1911) comes to hand while the proof sheets of the present volume are being revised. Cf. his interesting chapter on the Marxian theory of value.

[19] Seligman, Principles, pp. 184-85. See also Taylor, W. G. L., "Values, Positive and Relative," Annals A. A., vol. ix, pp. 70-106. Taylor, who follows Professor Clark largely, accepts the conception of social value as a quantity.

[20] Marx, Capital and Capitalistic Production, London, 1896, pp. 2-4. George, Science of Political Economy, New York, 1898, chap. xi.

[21] Natural Value, p. 53, n.

[22] "The Concept of an Economic Quantity," Q. J. E., May, 1907. Professor Carver insists on the quantitative nature of value, taking as his point of departure the point made infra, p. 27, with reference to money as a measure of values. But it is not clear that he has entirely freed himself from the conception of relativity, for he continues to speak of value as "purchasing power" (pp. 438-39), and this term has usually the relative, rather than the absolute, significance. Cf. his use of the term "purchasing power" in his Distribution of Wealth, 1904, pp. 51-52, where the relativity of value is insisted on as a basis for a criticism of Professor Clark's amendment of the Austrian theory.

[23] Paris, 1902, vol. i, p. 63.

[24] Fisher, Irving, The Nature of Capital and Income, New York, 1906, pp. 13 et seq. Ely, R. T. (and others). Outlines of Economics, New York, 1908, pp. 156-57. Professor Ely uses the term in a different sense on pp. 99-100; and on the pages first cited indicates that value, defined as a quantity of other goods, is to be distinguished from subjective value. But "subjective" (individual) value would hardly serve as an equivalent for the value described on pp. 99-100. There are, in fact, four pretty distinct uses of the term value to be found in Professor Ely's discussion, inadequately distinguished, and often confused in the treatment: (1) homogeneous quality among the diversities of the physical forms of wealth, by virtue of which a sum of wealth may be obtained (99-100); (2) ratio of exchange (156); (3) quantity of goods obtained in exchange (157); (4) subjective utility (157 and ante); and a fifth meaning is indicated for market value on pp. 358-59, where, in explaining the law of rent for pleasure grounds and residence sites, the "general law of value" is declared to be that value measures marginal utility. Cf. the confusions of utility and demand pointed out infra, chapter v. This loose treatment of the value concept, while doubtless accentuated by the fact that four men have coöperated in the production of the book, is too much characteristic of most of the text-books. There is even to-day little uniformity or agreement as to what value means.

[25] Natural Value, p. 53, n.

[26] Principles of Economics, p. 183. Professor Seligman in the Q. J. E. article (supra, p. 6, note i) indicates that Pantaleoni expresses a similar thought (Pure Economics, London, 1898, p. 127). This idea is elaborated by Professor Georg Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, Erster Teil, Kap. 2. (A translation of this chapter, under the title, "A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value," appears in the American Journal of Sociology, vol. v, pp. 577-603. The translation was made from the author's manuscript, before the publication of the book, and does not exactly correspond with the chapter as published by Simmel.) Simmel's contention is that, even for an isolated economy, value arises from exchange, and that exchange is essential to it. Every value is relative to some other value. But to develop this conception, "exchange" is distorted into a variety of meanings. In one place, exchange takes place between an isolated man and his environment. It makes no difference to him whether he is exchanging with other men or with the order of nature (Phil. des Geldes, p. 34). But later, exchange is declared to be "a sociological structure sui generis" (ibid., p. 56). Again, only in the vaguest sort of sense is exchange used in this expression, "wo wir Liebe um Liebe tauschen" (ibid., p. 33). Yet all these meanings are forced in to fit the exigencies of the argument. The doctrine of cost is brought in, and the exchange is between individual cost and individual utility, and an equality between them is insisted upon, despite the well-known phenomenon of "consumer's surplus." This emphasis on equality in exchanges is stressed especially on p. 31, and economic activity is said to derive its peculiar character from a consideration of these equalities in abstraction.

The gist of Simmel's argument comes out in the following: "The object is not for us a thing of value so long as it is dissolved in the subjective process as an immediate stimulator of feelings." Desire must encounter obstacles before a value can appear. "It is only the postponement of an object through obstacles, the anxiety lest the object escape [italics mine], the tension of struggle for it, which brings into existence that aggregate of desire elements which may be designated as intensity or passion of volition." Value is conditioned upon a "distance between subject and object" (A. J. S., 589-90).—I waive for the moment Simmel's apparent insistence upon the element of conscious desire as essential to value, though I shall attack that doctrine in a later chapter on the psychology of value. It is enough to point out here that this "distance between subject and object" is adequately present, that there is surely "anxiety lest the object escape," if only the object be sufficiently limited in supply, independently of the existence of other objects so limited.—Simmel undertakes to meet this objection by holding that "scarcity, purely as such, is only a negative quantity, an existence characterized by a non-existence. The non-existent, however, cannot be operative" (Phil. des G., p. 57).—But the scarcity, I would reply, is not, as he holds, "the quantitative relation in which the object stands to the aggregate of its kind" (A. J. S., p. 592), but is rather a relation between the object and our wants. A bushel of wheat would be a scarcity, a bushel of diamonds a superabundance, for a man. There is a positive thing here, not a mere "non-existence," and that positive thing is the unsatisfied want. Cf. Pareto, Cours d'Économie Politique, vol. i, p. 34.

See further, on the psychology of value, chapter x, and on Professor Seligman's theory of the relativity of value, chapter xvi, of the present volume.

[27] Laughlin, J. L., Elements of Political Economy, rev. ed., copyright 1902, p. 18: "Value ... is a ratio between two objective articles." See also Professor Laughlin's rejoinder to Clow's "The Quantity Theory and its Critics," Journal of P. E., 1902, where Professor Laughlin insists that exchange value is "something physical." Professor Davenport, Value and Distribution, Chicago, 1908, p. 569, defines value similarly.

[28] Value and Distribution, p. 569.

[29] Professor Davenport, caught between two apparently invincible logical difficulties, accepts this situation frankly, as, seemingly, the only thing possible. See Value and Distribution, p. 184, n. The ratio has no terms for him.

[30] Value and Distribution, pp. 330-31.

[31] "Values, Positive and Relative." Annals, vol. ix.

[32] It is, of course, recognized that exchange modifies value in so far as exchange is a productive process. But the essential thing here is the transfer aspect of exchange, which would hold even in a communistic society where value relations might be found out by some process other than exchange.

[33] Political Economy, New York, 1888, p. 84.

[34] Cours d'Économie Politique, vol. i, pp. 8-9.

[35] Edgeworth, F. Y., Mathematical Psychics, London, 1881, chapter on "Unnumerical Mathematics," pp. 83 et seq.

[36] A fuller discussion of the functions of the value concept is given in chapter xi where this argument is materially strengthened. The points here made, however, seem adequate.

[37] Jevons, Principles of Economics, 1905 (posthumous), p. 50.

[38] Walker, op. cit., p. 5.

[39] Marx, op. cit., vol. i, chap. i.

[40] Laughlin, Elements, p. 77. Cf. also, Ely, op. cit., 99-100.

[41] Ibid., p. 18. It is interesting to note that Professor Irving Fisher so defines wealth and value as to divorce the two concepts. Wealth includes free human beings, who cannot be exchanged, while the idea of value is derived from that of price, which, in turn, comes from the ideas of exchange and transfer. (Nature of Capital and Income, chap. i.)

[42] Principles, pp. 8-11.

[43] Money, p. 288.

[44] Cf. Kinley, op. cit., Merriam, loc. cit., and Carver, "The Concept of an Economic Quantity," loc. cit. Cf. also, Laughlin, Money, 1903, pp. 14-16; and Davenport, Value and Distribution, p. 181, n.