CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL VALUE: THE THEORIES OF URBAN AND TARDE
Our point of view will be more adequately defined if we consider briefly the theories of social value, set forth from the angle of a general (as opposed to a specifically economic) conception of value, by Professor W. M. Urban and Gabriel Tarde. These theories contain some elements which we shall need, and our criticism of them will bring into clearer light the need for the distinctive point of view of this book.
Professor Urban's conception as to the nature of value, in its individual manifestation, has been already indicated, in part, in chapter x. Stressing the organic nature of the relations of a value to other phases of the mental life, insisting on a recognition of the "presuppositions" of value, and recognizing that both feeling and desire (or desire-disposition) are involved in value—our cursory account cannot begin to do justice to the subtlety and exhaustiveness of his masterly analysis—he still insists on finding the fundamental nature of value in a phase of its structure (rather than in its function), namely, in the feeling. From this part of his doctrine we have found it necessary to differ. When he comes to the problem of social value, he carries over the same conception of value, and he finds that social values appear when many individuals, through "sympathetic participation," feel the same value. With our conclusion (chapter viii) that we can share each other's emotional life he is in thorough accord. His argument in this connection is admirable.[154] His interest is primarily in moral social values, and he attempts no detailed treatment of economic social values, seeming to hold that the Austrian treatment of objective value is adequate.[155] Both moral and economic values are "objective and social."[156]
Collective desire and feeling, when it has acquired this "common meaning," when the object of desire and feeling is consciously held in common, we may describe as Social Synergy; and the objective, over-individual values may be described as the resultants of social synergies. The introduction of this term has for its purpose the clearest possible distinction between social forces as conscious and as subconscious. It is with the former that we are here concerned.[157]
Conscious collective feeling is thus insisted upon as an essential in social values, and Professor Urban insists[158] that the value ceases to be a value as this conscious feeling wanes—even though conceding[159] that it retains the power of influencing the felt values, after it has passed into the realm of "things taken for granted."
But this stressing of the conscious element of feeling—which as I have previously shown is a variable element even within the individual psychology, and has no necessary quantitative relation to the functional significance, the amount of motivating power, of the value—makes it really impossible for him to resolve the question of how the strength of a social value is to be determined. He does, indeed, undertake something of the sort[160] (he is speaking of ethical values), making the quantity of value depend on "supply and demand," the supply depending on the number of people willing to supply a given moral act, and the intensity of their willingness to do it—extension and intention both being recognized. And demand is similarly determined. The thing seems to be nothing more than an arithmetical sum of intensities of individual feelings, or, most justly, individual values. But this leaves us no wiser than before as to the social weight, the social validity, of these social values. An infinite deal would depend, both in the case of supply and demand, on who the individuals are. A demand for a given act from a poor group of fanatics, however intense, might count for little, while such a demand coming from a group with great prestige, with great social power, might have a very great significance. If we are trying to get an objective quantity of social value, which shall have a definite weight in determining social action—the function of social values—we are as poorly off as we were with the Austrian analysis which, in order to get an objective quantity of economic value out of individual "marginal utilities," has to assume value in the background as the validating force behind these individual elements. The error here, as there, comes from an abstraction, from centring attention upon the conspicuous conscious elements. And it comes in stressing the structure, the content, of social values, to the exclusion of their functional power. Here is our real problem, if we would determine the social validity of values. This lurking element of social power remains an unexplained residuum.
This residuum of power, backing up the conscious psychological factors, gets explicit recognition, even though no real explanation, at the hands of Gabriel Tarde,[161] to whose theory of social value we now turn. I quote chiefly from his Psychologie Économique, and the numerals which follow refer to pages in volume i. (63-64) Value understood in its largest sense, takes in the whole of social science. It is a quality which we attribute to things, like color,[162] but which, like color, exists only in ourselves.... It consists in the accord of the collective judgments ... as to the capacity of objects to be more or less, and by a greater or less number of persons, believed, desired, or admired. This quality is thus of that peculiar species of qualities which present numerical degrees, and mount or descend a scale without essentially changing their nature, and hence merit the name of quantities.
There are three great categories of value: "valeur-vérité," "valeur-utilité," and "valeur-beauté." To ideas, to goods (in a generic sense of the term), and to things considered as sources "de voluptés collectives," we attribute a truth, a utility, a beauty, greater or less. Quite as much as utility, beauty and truth are children of the opinion of the mass, in accord, or at war, with the reason of an élite which influences it.