Part 1 — CHAPTER I

PROBLEM AND PLAN OF PROCEDURE

Social Value concept recently become important, chiefly in America, and primarily through the influence of Professor J. B. Clark—Value and "social marginal utility"—Relation of social-value theory to Austrian theory: Professor Clark's view; views of Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser, and Sax—Statement of the author's position: conceptions of social utility and social cost unsatisfactory, but social value concept a necessity for the validation of economic theory—Plan of procedure: study of logical requirements of valid value concept; failure of current theory to justify such a concept; cause of this failure in faulty psychology, epistemology, and sociology presupposed by current economic theory; reconstruction of these presuppositions; on the basis of the reconstruction, a positive theory of social value 3