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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:43 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
If I interpret Sumitra Shah's position correctly, she believes that an
understanding of the concepts of (1) value in use and (2) value in exchange
result from shared values that are culture-specific. She writes that
"[v]alue is a judgment. It is easy to invent a large number of different
criteria for judging a thing or an action." The distinction between these
concepts "ignores the reality of an economic society in which our shared
moral principles as Adam Smith would say, form the foundation of even a
market society." She goes on to say that "[w]ithout...moral judgments
emerging from a 'framework of social reciprocity' [Keith Tribe's words in
his JEL 1999 article] value in use and value in exchange will not have
operational meaning."
On the surface, this statement seems illogical. So I wonder if she could
explain it more fully. Let me elaborate. People from widely different
cultures and societies have used money. If we could somehow interview all
of these people, they would almost universally agree that they acquire some
items because they plan to use them and other items because they plan to
exchange them. Does not this prospect undermine her position? Does it not
suggest that "value in use" and "value in exchange" do indeed have an
operational meaning? Do they not have meaning both for the actors and for
the economist and historian who study actions under the conditions of a
market economy?
Of course, we, as economists and historians, must agree to be interested in
this particular phenomena. So /we/ have shared values. But Sumitra is not
discussing the shared values of economists and historians. Also, the people
who acquire these items must have definite beliefs about how they plan to
use them -- i.e, about using or exchanging them. A person with no
experience in a money economy would have no reason to acquire a paper
dollar, for example. So there is a sense in which the users of money have
/values in common/. But these are not shared values, as Sumitra uses the
term. Finally, it is hard to imagine how someone could come to possess
knowledge of the type that is necessary to distinguish value in use from
value in exchange without living in society which, by definition, has
shared values. But since practically everyone in the
world today -- and certainly in that part of the world where economics is
relevant -- lives in such a society; she cannot be referring to this fact.
So the question is: which shared values is she writing about? And why are
they relevant to economics?
Pat Gunning
Feng Chia University
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