Note 165 — Chapter XIII

Cf. Davenport, op. cit., p. 560. "For, in truth, not merely the distribution of the landed and other instrumental, income-commanding wealth in society, but also the distribution of general purchasing power ... are, at any moment in society, to be explained only by appeal to a long and complex history [italics mine], a distribution resting, no doubt, in part upon technological value productivity, past or present, but in part also tracing back to bad institutions of property rights and inheritance, to bad taxation, to class privileges, to stock-exchange manipulation ... and, as well, to every sort of vested right in iniquity.... But there being no apparent method of bringing this class of facts within the orderly sequences of economic law, we shall—perhaps—do well to dismiss them from our discussion...." [Italics are mine.] It may be questioned if the "orderly sequence" is worth very much if it ignore facts so decisive as these. It is precisely this sort of abstractionism which has vitiated so much of value theory. Most economists slur over the omissions; Professor Davenport, seeing clearly and speaking frankly, makes the extent of the abstraction clear. I venture to suggest that the reason he can find no place for facts like these within the orderly sequence of his economic theory is that he lacks an adequate sociological theory at the basis of his economic theory. A historical regressus will not, of course, fit in in any logical manner with a synthetic theory which tries to construct an existing situation out of existing elements. Our plan of a logical analysis of existing psychic forces makes it possible to treat these facts which have come to us from the past, not as facts of different nature from the "utilities" with which the value theorists have dealt, but rather as fluid psychic forces, of the same nature, and in the same system, as those "utilities."