[187] It might be possible to put the argument into terms which would give an analogical meaning to "social utility" and "social cost." The diagram representing the intersection of the demand curve and the supply curve, fixing price, may be taken equally well to represent the balance of social forces which lies back of the market phenomena in the case of a given commodity. The demand curve might then be called a "social utility" curve, and the supply curve a "social cost" curve, if only it be remembered that cost and utility here have only a vague, analogical meaning, and cover up a host of factors which, while they fall conveniently into two opposing groups, like the individual's "cost" and "utility," are yet much more than the latter. But they are really so very much more than the latter, that it seems to me misleading to continue the use of the terms, utility and cost, when the associations of these terms in economic theory are remembered. The tendency would be to make the student feel that value depends on two abstract phases of social-mental life, instead of being an outcome of the organic whole.
[188] Pp. 342-43.
[189] The reader will understand that I am using accustomed phraseology and making customary assumptions, not because I approve of them, but because the point at issue here is not affected by the question as to the relations between value and utility, etc. The distinction between a utility curve and a price curve does not affect the argument here.
[190] Analytically expressed xy = c. This curve, by definition, leaves the "value area" (xy) constant.
[191] A complication must be noticed here, due to my use of the term, "demand curve." I am tacitly assuming that the absolute value of the money unit remains the same in this process, and so must say that the English School would concede that the value of the money unit has doubled even though holding that all the other values remain unchanged, except with reference to the money unit. For Professor Seligman, the value of money (i.e., the total stock) has not changed.
[192] But the limitation is not absolute. New incentives may call out substantial increases in productive activity.
[193] Written by Professor W. M. Urban, author of Valuation, to which frequent reference has been made. Vide Valuation, p. 4, n. The article was, of course, written several years before the book.
[194] In this view I am sustained by Professor John Dewey.
[195] Cf. Stuart, "Valuation as a Logical Process," in Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory, pp. 328, n., and 330.
[196] See supra, p. 165, n.