Sec. 19. The argument may now be summarily reviewed.
I. How are we to understand the acquisition, by an individual, of what
are called new economic needs and interests? Except by a fairly obvious
fallacy of retrospection we cannot regard this phenomenon as a mere
arousal of so-called latent or implicit desires. New products and new
means of production afford "satisfactions" and bring about objective
results which are unimaginable and therefore unpredictable, in any
descriptive fashion, in advance. In a realistic or empirical view of the
matter, these constitute genuinely new developments of personality and
of social function, not mere unfoldings of a preformed logical or vital
system. "Human nature" is modifiable and economic choice and action are
factors in this indivisible process (Sec.Sec. 2-4). Now "logically" it would
seem clear that unless a new commodity is an object of desire it will
not be made or paid for. On the other hand, with equal "logic," a _new_
commodity, it would seem, _cannot_ be an object of desire because all
desire must be for what we already know. We seem confronted with a
complete _impasse_ (Sec. 5). But the _impasse_ is conceptual only. We have
simply to acknowledge the patent fact of our recognition of the new as
novel and our interest in the new in its outstanding character of
novelty. We need only express and interpret this fact, instead of
fancying ourselves bound to explain it away. It is an interest not less
genuine and significant in economic experience than elsewhere (Sec.Sec. 6, 7).
Its importance lies in the fact that it obliges us to regard what is
called economic choice not as a balancing of utilities, marginal or
otherwise, but as a process of "constructive comparison." The new
commodity and its purchase price are in reality symbols for
alternatively possible systems of life and action. Can the old be
relinquished for the new? Before this question is answered each system
may be criticized and interpreted from the standpoint of the other, each
may be supplemented by suggestion, by dictate of tradition and by
impulsive prompting, by inference, and by conjecture. Finally in
experimental fashion an election must be made. The system as accepted
may or may not be, in terms, identical with one of the initial
alternatives; it can never be identical in full meaning and perspective
with either one. And in the end we have not chosen the new because its
value, as seen beforehand, measured more than the value of the old, but
we now declare the old, seen in retrospect, to have been worth less (Sec.Sec.
8-12). There are apparently no valid objections to this view to be
drawn from the current logical type of marginal-utility analysis (Sec. 13).
II. Because so-called economic "choice" is in reality "constructive
comparison" it must be regarded as essentially ethical in import. Ethics
and economic theory, instead of dealing with separate problems of
conduct, deal with distinguishable but inseparable stages belonging to
the complete analysis of most, if not all, problems (Sec. 14). This view
suggests, (_a_) that no reasons in experience or in logic exist for
identifying the economic interest with an attitude of exclusive or
particularistic egoism (Sec. 15), and (_b_) that social reformers are
justified in their assumption of a certain "perfectibility" in human
nature--a constructive responsiveness instead of an insensate and
stubborn inertia (Sec. 16). Again, in the process of constructive
comparison in its economic phase, Price or Exchange Value is, in
apparent accord with the English classical tradition, the fundamental
working conception. Value as "absolute" is essentially a subordinate and
"conservative" conception, belonging to a status of system and routine,
and is "absolute" in a purely functional sense (Sec. 17). And finally
constructive comparison, with price or exchange value as its dominant
conception, is clearly nothing if not a market process. In the nature of
the case, then, there can be no such ante-market definiteness and
rigidity of demand schedules as a strictly marginal-utility theory of
market prices logically must require (Sec. 18).
Sec. 20. In at least two respects the argument falls short of what might be
desired. No account is given of the actual procedure of constructive
comparison and nothing like a complete survey of the leading ideas and
problems of economic theory is undertaken by way of verification. But to
have supplied the former in any satisfactory way would have required an
unduly extended discussion of the more general, or ethical, phases of
constructive comparison. The other deficiency is less regrettable, since
the task in question is one that could only be hopefully undertaken and
convincingly carried through by a professional economist.
For the present purpose, it is perhaps enough to have found in our
economic experience and behavior the same interest in novelty that is so
manifest in other departments of life, and the same attainment of new
self-validating levels of power and interest, through the acquisition
and exploitation of the novel. In our economic experience, no more than
elsewhere, is satisfaction an ultimate and self-explanatory term.
Satisfaction carries with it always a reference to the level of power
and interest that makes it possible and on which it must be measured. To
seek satisfaction for its own sake or to hinge one's interest in science
or art upon their ability to serve the palpable needs of the present
moment--these, together, make up the meaning of what is called
Utilitarianism. And Utilitarianism in this sense (which is far less what
Mill meant by the term than a tradition he could never, with all his
striving, quite get free of), this type of Utilitarianism spells
routine. It is the surrender of initiative and control, in the quest for
ends in life, for a philistine pleased acceptance of the ends that
Nature, assisted by the advertisement-writers, sets before us. But this
type of Utilitarianism is less frequent in actual occurrence than its
vogue in popular literature and elsewhere may appear to indicate. As a
matter of fact, we more often look to satisfaction, not as an end of
effort or a condition to be preserved, but as the evidence that an
experimental venture has been justified in its event. And this is a
widely different matter, for in this there is no inherent implication of
a habit-bound or egoistic narrowness of interest in the conceiving or
the launching of the venture.
The economic interest, as a function of intelligence, finds its proper
expression in a valuation set upon one thing in terms of another--a
valuation that is either a step in a settled plan of spending and
consumption or marks the passing of an old plan and our embarkation on a
new. From such a view it must follow that the economic betterment of an
individual or a society can consist neither in the accumulation of
material wealth alone nor in a more diversified technical knowledge and
skill. For the individual or for a collectivist state there must be
added to these things alertness and imagination in the personal quest
and discovery of values and a broad and critical intelligence in making
the actual trial of them. Without a commensurate gain in these qualities
it will avail little to make technical training and industrial
opportunity more free or even to make the rewards of effort more
equitable and secure. But it has been one of the purposes of this
discussion to suggest that just this growth in outlook and intelligence
may in the long run be counted on--not indeed as a direct and simple
consequence of increasing material abundance but as an expression of an
inherent creativeness in man that responds to discipline and education
and will not fail to recognize the opportunity it seeks.
Real economic progress is ethical in aim and outcome. We cannot think of
the economic interest as restricted in its exercise to a certain sphere
or level of effort--such as "the ordinary business of life" or the
gaining of a "livelihood" or the satisfaction of our so-called
"material" wants, or the pursuit of an enlightened, or an unenlightened,
self-regard. Economics has no special relation to "material" or even to
commonplace ends. Its materialism lies not in its aim and tendency but
in its problem and method. It has no bias toward a lower order of
mundane values. It only takes note of the ways and degrees of dependence
upon mundane resources and conditions that values of every order must
acknowledge. It reminds us that morality and culture, if they are
genuine, must know not only what they intend but what they cost. They
must understand not only the direct but the indirect and accidental
bearing of their purposes upon all of our interests, private and social,
that they are likely to affect. The detachment of the economic interest
from any particular level or class of values is only the obverse aspect
of the special kind of concern it has with values of every sort. The
very generality of the economic interest, and the abstractness of the
ideas by which it maintains routine or safeguards change in our
experience, are what make it unmistakably ethical. Without specific ends
of its own, it affords no ground for dogmatism or apologetics. And this
indicates as the appropriate task of economic theory not the arrest and
thwarting but the steadying and shaping of social change.