Neither Urban nor Tarde primarily concerned with economic value—Urban's important contributions—Insists on conscious feeling as essential for social value—But feeling may vary in intensity without affecting the power in motivation of the value—Feeling significant when values are to be compared—Social weight of those who feel a value a highly significant phase which Urban ignores—Tarde recognizes this phase, but errs in treating it as an abstract element, which obeys the laws of simple arithmetic [124]
CHAPTER XIII
ECONOMIC SOCIAL VALUE
How get out of Austrian circle?—Temporal regressus vs. logical analysis of the concrete whole of the Social Mind—Even in Wieser's "natural" community, psychic elements other than "marginal utility" significant for the determination of economic values, especially legal and moral values concerned with distribution—Quotation from Mill—Critique of "pure economic" theories of distribution—They presuppose as a "framework" a set of legal and moral values which, in modern times, especially, are little more stable than "pure economic" forces, and which, in any case, are of same nature as economic forces,—fluid, psychic forces—"Pure economic" forces, working in vacuo, would lead to anarchy; any concrete economic tendency depends on legal and moral forces quite as much as on "pure economic" forces—Illustrations [132]
CHAPTER XIV
ECONOMIC SOCIAL VALUE (continued)
Abstract elements of the Austrian and English schools, individual "utilities" and "costs," have their place in the concrete whole of social intermental life—Social causes largely determine them—But this not enough for a theory of social value—Intensity of a man's feelings or desires has no relation whatever to value in market till we know social rankings of men—Conflicts of values concerned with these social rankings—Prices express results of court decisions as well as results of changing individual desires for economic goods—We break the circle by turning to the concrete whole of social-mental life—Economics has failed to profit by example of other social sciences here—No social science can explain its phenomena by reference to one or two abstract factors [148]
CHAPTER XV
SOME MECHANICAL ANALOGIES
Mechanical analogies of limited use in revealing full complexity of social control, but of use for certain purposes—Our argument can be put, in part, in terms of mechanical analogies—Transformations of social forces—Illustrations—Marginal equilibria among social forces—Illustrations—Social forces of control take different forms under different conditions—Mechanical analogies useful enough for economic price-analysis—Our thesis involves no radical revision of economic methodology—It is rather concerned with interpretation and validation of economic methodology [156]