The Antinomy of Value and the Service of Value As consequence of the observation that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the value of possessions increases with economic prosperity, the exceptions have been either entirely forgotten, or put on one side as unessential and unimportant disturbances. The idea has gone abroad that value is the highest principle in economic life, and that all our economic action must be regulated with reference to it. It has been said that people should so act as to obtain on the whole the greatest amount of value.
If this idea were correct, our economic life would be directed by a power which would, in some measure, work against the aims of economic conduct; to the extent, namely, of preventing the realisation of economic ends beyond a certain point; that is, beyond the up grade of value. And one would be justified in speaking of an antinomy in the law of value, which would refer not only to exchange value, as Proudhon has asserted, but to every form of value. It would be expedient for every one, not only from a money-****** and selling point of view, but in his own private economy -- even for a Robinson Crusoe who could not sell at all -- to convert superfluity into want, and want into greater want, in order to create and increase value. No one, however, would wish to act in this way, and it is therefore untrue that value has the guidance of our economies. The highest principle of all economy is utility. Where value and utility come into conflict utility must conquer; there is nothing in the nature of value which could give it the ascendency. Utility is imperfectly contained in value, with the accompanying peculiarity that the amount of utility which is contained is intimately associated with the very idea of goods. But this latter phenomenon cannot have the effect of preventing any one from entering into transactions which a complete addition of the utilities to be got from the goods acquired would show to be profitable. If I were able, by any method whatever, to secure for myself a constant superfluity of all the services of goods, the idea that my interest need not thereafter be cared over from the services to the goods themselves, would not cause me a moment's hesitation in securing the superfluity. Or suppose that Iexpected a great amount of utility from some transaction. and the transaction at the same time caused me a certain loss of interest in the goods, this latter circumstance would not deter me in the faintest degree from carrying through the transaction.
Under these conditions, then, what service remains for value to render in economic life? A highly important one. The cases where there is a conflict between value and utility -- where increase of the one is decrease of the other -- occur but seldom.
Experience shows that economic life moves almost always on the "up grade," and here the tendencies of increase or decrease are similar for value and utility. Whenever the utility of a stock increases with the augmentation of the stock, the value also increases, and whenever the utility of a stock decreases with a diminution of the stock, the value also decreases. A greater value almost always corresponds with the greater utility, and a lesser value with the lesser utility, and on this account transactions which commend themselves in consideration of their utility, commend themselves also in consideration of their value.
The service of value consists, then, in representing utility wherever both show the same tendency. We do not calculate utilities; we calculate values. Value is the form in which utility is calculated, and this renders calculation infinitely more easy. It is difficult indeed to estimate the utility of a stock; easy to estimate its value. That is to say, the value of a stock can be expressed as the single product of stock and marginal utility; it is a multiple of the marginal utility:
