[67] Cf. Helfferich, Das Geld, ed. 1903, p. 480.
[68] Discussed more fully infra, chapter on "Dodo Bones."
[69] I make virtually no reference to the "spoken" part, which is chiefly concerned with index numbers.
[70] Chapter on "Dodo Bones."
[71] Chapter on "Barter."
[72] In its psychological explanation, this bears somewhat the same relation to the social value concept of the present writer that the social mind concept of Giddings and Lewes bears to the social mind concept of the present writer. Cf. Social Value, ch. 9. Wieser's concept excludes individual peculiarities. It is an abstraction from individual values, a distillation of their common essence. The social value concept of the present writer is a focal point in which are summarized all the individual values, whether alike or divergent, and not merely the individual marginal utilities of the goods in question (Wieser's only factors) but also the individual emotions which affect the distribution of wealth. Wieser's concept is based on a study of individual marginal utilities considered as atomic elements; that of the present writer looks on the social mind as an organic whole, in which individual mental processes are phases, and does not try to synthesize a social value out of elements, but rather, to analyze it into elements. In the function in economic theory for which they are destined, however, the two concepts have much in common. Both seek to be the fundamental economic quantity. Both seek to be causal forces, lying behind prices, even though expressed in prices; both oppose the conception of value as merely relative.
[73] Social Value, chs. 5, 6, 7, and 13. Infra in the present chapter.
[74] See especially the chapter on "The Passiveness of Prices."
[75] Cf. the writer's "Schumpeter's Dynamic Economics," Political Science Quarterly, Dec. 1915. Schumpeter's theory, as there presented, is based on the brief discussion in his Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 61 et seq., 105, 166-667, 116, 464, and on Schumpeter's verbal expositions of the theory during his American trip. Since that account was published, Professor W. C. Mitchell has given an account of Schumpeter's doctrine, based on the fuller discussion in Schumpeter's Wesen und Hauptinhalt der theoretischen Nationalökonomie, which is in accord with the account here given. (Mitchell, in Papers and Proceedings, Supplement to March, 1916, American Econ. Rev., p. 150.) Mitchell attributes the essential elements of Schumpeter's theory to Walras. The first exposition in English of the conception, so far as the present writer is aware, is in Irving Fisher's Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices, Trans. Conn. Acad. of Arts and Sciences, 1892. Professor Fisher, in his preface, accords priority to Jevons, Auspitz and Lieben, and to Walras. The conception is not to be found in Jevons, though many of the ideas involved in it are. The first non-mathematical exposition of the doctrine, so far as I know, is by Schumpeter. As will be made clear in a footnote at the end of the present chapter, neither Wicksteed nor Davenport has really forced the problem through, to the full equilibrium picture, and neither has escaped the Austrian circle. I do not concur with Professor Mitchell's interpretation of Wicksteed on this point. It may well be that mathematical method, with a system of simultaneous equations, was necessary for the development of the idea. If so, it illustrates both the strength and the weakness of mathematical economic theory: it clarifies thinking, but it gets no causal theory! At all events, no causal theory emerges in this case.
[76] Positive Theory of Capital, Bk. IV, and Grundzüge der Theorie des wirtschaftlichen Güterwerts, in Conrad's Jahrbücher, 1886. The writer who would adhere to Schumpeter's doctrine must give up all notion that any individual occupies a critical "marginal" position. All men are equally marginal in Schumpeter's scheme.