Social Value
Chapter 12: Social Value:
The Theories of Urban and Tarde
Benjamin McAlester Anderson Jr.
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OUR point of view will be more adequately defined if we consider briefly the theories of social value, set forth from the angle of a general (as opposed to a specifically economic) conception of value, by Professor W. M. Urban and Gabriel Tarde. These theories contain some elements which we shall need, and our criticism of them will bring into clearer light the need for the distinctive point of view of this book.
Professor Urban's conception as to the nature of value, in its individual manifestation, has been already indicated, in part, in chapter x. Stressing the organic nature of the relations of a value to other phases of the mental life, insisting on a recognition of the "presuppositions" of value, and recognizing that both feeling and desire (or desire -disposition) are involved in value -our cursory account cannot begin to do justice to the subtlety and exhaustiveness of his masterly analysis - he still insists on finding the fundamental nature of value in a phase of its structure (rather than in its function), namely, in the feeling. From this part of his doctrine we have found it necessary to differ. When he comes to the problem of social value, he carries over the same conception of value, and he finds that social
(125) values appear when many individuals, through 6 " sympathetic participation," feel the same value. With our conclusion (chapter VIII) that we can share each other's emotional life he is in thorough accord. His argument in this connection is admirable.[1] His interest is primarily in moral social values, and he attempts no detailed treatment of economic social values, seeming to hold that the Austrian treatment of objective value is adequate.[2] Both moral and economic values are " objective and social." [3]
Collective desire and feeling, when it has acquired this "common meaning," when the object of desire and feeling is consciously held in common, we may describe as Social Synergy; and the objective, over-individual values may be described as the resultants of social synergies. The introduction of this term has for its purpose the clearest possible distinction between social forces as conscious and as subconscious. It is with the former that we are here concerned.[4]
Conscious collective feeling is thus insisted upon as an essential in social values, and Professor Urban insists [5] that the value ceases to be a value as this conscious feeling wanes even though conceding [6] that it retains the power of influencing the felt values, after it has passed into the realm of "things taken for granted."
But this stressing of the conscious element of feeling -which as I have previously shown is a variable element even within the individual psychology, and has no necessary quantitative relation to the functional significance, the amount
(126) of motivating power, of the value -makes it really impossible for him to resolve the question of how the strength of a social value is to be determined. He does, indeed, undertake something of the sort[7] (he is speaking of ethical values), making the quantity of value depend on "supply and demand," the supply depending on the number of people willing to supply a given moral act, and the intensity of their willingness to do it - extension and intention both being recognized. And demand is similarly determined. The thing seems to be nothing more than an arithmetical sum of intensities of individual feelings, or, most justly, individual values. But this leaves us no wiser than before as to the social weight, the social validity, of these social values. An infinite deal would depend, both in the case of supply and demand, on who the individuals are. A demand for a given act from a poor group of fanatics, however intense, might count for little, while such a demand coming from a group with great prestige, with great social power, might have a very great significance. If we are trying to get an objective quantity of social value, which shall have a definite weight in determining social action - the function of social values -we are as poorly off as we were with the Austrian analysis which, in order to get an objective quantity of economic value out of individual "marginal utilities," has to assume value in the background as the validating force behind these individual elements. The error here,
(127) as there, comes from an abstraction, from centring attention upon the conspicuous conscious elements. And it comes in stressing the structure, the content, of social values, to the exclusion of their functional power. Here is our real problem, if we would determine the social validity of values. This lurking element of social power remains an unexplained residuum.
This residuum of power, backing up the conscious psychological factors, gets explicit recognition, even though no real explanation, at the hands of Gabriel Tarde,[8] to whose theory of social value we now turn. I quote chiefly from his Psychologie Economique, and the numerals which follow refer to pages in volume 1. (63-64) Value understood in its largest sense, takes in the whole of social science. It is a quality which we attribute to things, like color,[9] but which, like color, exists only in ourselves. . . . It consists in the accord of the collective judgments . . . as to the capacity of objects to be more or less, and by a greater or less number of persons, believed, desired, or admired. This quality is thus of that peculiar species of qualities which present numerical degrees, and mount or descend a scale without essentially changing their nature, and hence merit the name of quantities.
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There are three great categories of value: "valeur-vérité," "valeur-utilité," and "valeur-beauté." To ideas, to goods (in a generic sense of the term), and to things considered as sources "de voluptés collectives," we attribute a truth, a utility, a beauty, greater or less. Quite as much as utility, beauty and truth are children of the opinion of the mass, in accord, or at war, with the reason of an Rite which influences it.
(It may be noted in passing that Tarde's "trinitarian" conception of value is not as artificial as it seems. It is simply a method of classification, and there are many subdivisions under each head. Economic value, e.g., is a subspecies within the group of utility values - " goods " include "pouvoirs," "droits," "mérites," and "richesses" (66). Our own conception is, of course, that values are thoroughly "pluralistic " as to their structure, and are "monistic" in their function.)
(64) The greater or less truth of a thing signifies three things diversely combined: the greater or smaller number, the greater or less social importance (" poids," " considération," compétence " "reconnue") of the people who believe it, and the greater or less intensity of their belief in it. The greater or less utility of an object expresses the greater or less number of people who desire it in a given society at a given time, the greater or less social " poids " (" ici poids veut dire pouvoir et droit ") of the persons who desire it, and the greater or less intensity of their desire for it. And so- with beauty.
(129) Here is, then, an explicit recognition of the element of the social weight of those who create a social value, as a factor coordinate with their number and the intensity of their desires, etc. Toward resolving it, however, Tarde makes no real contribution. If enough be read into the parenthetical expressions given above, following the word "poids" in each case, they would be found to harmonize with the theory of the writer, shortly to be set forth. As it happens, however, Tarde attempts to resolve this factor of the social weight of a participant in a social value, in an analogous case, and gives us a different sort of explanation. He is seeking a "glorio mètre," or measure of glory-for glory is a social value too. He finds that to determine a man's glory we must take account of two things: one his notoriety, and the other, the admiration in which he is held (71-72). The first is simple: we will count the number who watch him and talk about what he does. The second is harder, for we must not merely count the number who admire him, but also determine the importance of each as an admirer. But how get at this? Tarde suggests that the study of the cephalic index will throw light upon the problem - no satisfactory solution, I think! - but says that anyhow the problem is practically solved every day in university and administrative examinations.
Apart from the fact that conscious desire (or conscious belief, etc.), rather than functional power, is made the basis of Tarde's social value, and apart from the failure to give any real ac-
(130) -count of the origin of this "social weight," of the individuals in the group which creates the social value, there is a further defect in Tarde's analysis which cannot be strongly objected to. It is his effort to treat organic processes as if they were an arithmetical sum of elements. A sum of abstractions will not give you a concrete reality. A man's social weight is not a thing independent of relations, a thing which can be thrown now here and now there with the same results in each case. And two men, each with a definite social weight, do not have precisely twice that social weight when they combine with each other. Two great leaders of opposing, evenly balanced political parties, combining their influence, may secure wonderful results, leading both parties to agree on a programme, and carrying it through. Two equally great leaders, but both within the same party, may be unable to accomplish anything by combining their efforts. And it may happen that two men, each with great weight in his own sphere, would be so incongruous if they tried to cooperate, that their joint weight would be less than the weight of either alone. It is not a matter of arithmetical addition. Social power can be used in certain ways, and in certain organic connections. If we care to use a mechanical phrase, the effort to use it out of organic connections is apt to result in so much "friction" that much of the power is lost.
The objection to the insistence on the amount of conscious desire or feeling as a criterion of the amount of value holds for social values quite
(131) as much as for individual values. The social value of the gold standard, judging by the amount of desire and feeling involved, by the degree to which it was a factor in consciousness, was vastly greater during the campaign of 1896, while its validity was still in question, than it was after it had been validated, and made a really effective fact. Social value depends, not on conscious intensity, but on motivating power. The social consciousness, as the individual consciousness, is economical. And the need for conscious feeling, for conscious desire, in connection with social, as with individual, values, arises when values must be compared, when they are in question, when they must show themselves for what they are, that they may be brought into equilibrium with antagonistic values. And the amount of consciousness will not be greater than the need for it - and, alas, is rarely as great as the need! When a value becomes accepted, when its place is secure, when the equilibrium is established, conscious feeling and desire with reference to it tend to pass away, and peace comes.
Tarde seems to recognize this, indeed, when he says (72, n.):
Of nobility, as of glory, it is proper to remark that it is a force, a means of action, for him who possesses it, but that it is a faith, a peace, for the people who accept it, and who, in believing in it, create it.
