Note 72 — Chapter V

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.