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A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value ...............................................................................................................1

by Georg Simmel.....................................................................................................................................1

The fact of economic exchange confers upon the value of things something superindividual. It detaches

them from dissolution in the mere subjectivity of the agents, and causes them to determine each other

reciprocally, since each exerts its economic function in the other. The practically effective value is conferred

upon the object, not merely by its own desirability, but by the desirability of another object. Not merely the

relationship to the receptive subjects characterizes this value, but also the fact that it arrives at this

relationship only at the price of a sacrifice; while from the opposite point of view this sacrifice appears as a

good to be enjoyed, and the object in question, on the contrary, as a sacrifice. Hence the objects acquire a

reciprocity of counterweight, which makes value appear in a quite special manner as an objective quality

indwelling in themselves. While the object itself is the thing in controversy which means that the sacrifice

which it represents is being determined its significance for both contracting parties appears much more as

something outside of these latter and selfexistent than if the individual thought of it only in its relation to

himself. We shall see later how also isolated industry, by placing the workman over against the demands of

nature, imposes upon him the like necessity of sacrifice for gaining of the object, so that in this case also the

like relationship, with the one exception that only a single party has been changed, may endow the object

with the same independent qualities, yet with their significance dependent upon its own objective conditions.

Desire and the feeling of the agent stand, to be sure, as the motor energy behind all this, but from this in and

of itself this value form could not proceed. It rather comes only from the reciprocal counterbalancing of the

To be sure, in order that equivalence and exchange of values may emerge, some material to which value can

attach must be at the basis. For industry as such the fact that these materials are equivalent to each other and

exchangeable is the turningpoint. It guides the stream of appraisal through the form of exchange, at the

same time creating a middle realm between desires, in which all human movement has its source, and the

satisfaction of enjoyment in which it culminates. The specific character of economic activity as a special form

of commerce exists, if we may venture the paradox, not so much in the fact that it exchanges values as that it

exchanges values. To be sure, the significance which things gain in and with exchange rests never isolated by

the side of their subjectiveimmediate significance, that is, the one originally decisive of the relationship. It is

rather the case that the two belong together, as form and content connote each other. But the Objective

procedure makes an abstraction, so to speak, from the fact that values constitute its material, and derives its

peculiar character from the equality of the same somewhat as geometry finds its tasks only in connection

with the magnitude relations of things, without bringing into its consideration the substances in

connection with which alone these relationships actually have existence. That thus not only reflection upon

industry, but industry itself, consists, so to speak, in a real abstraction from the surrounding actuality of the

appraising processes is not so wonderful as it at first appears when we once make clear to ourselves how

extensively human practice, cognition included, reckons with abstractions. The energies, relationships,

qualities of things to which in so far our own proper essence also belongs_constitute objectively a unified

interrelationship, which is divided into a multiplicity of independent series or motives only after the

interposition of our interests, and in order to be manipulated by us. Accordingly, each science investigates

phenomena which possess an exclusive unity, and cleancut lines of division from the problems of other

sciences, only from the point of view which the special science proposes as its own. Reality, on the other

hand, has no regard to these boundary lines, but every section of the world presents a conglomeration of tasks

for the most numerous sciences. Likewise our practice dissects from the external or internal complexity of

things onesided series. Notice, for example, into how many systems a forest is divided. These in turn

become objects of special interest to a hunter, a proprietor, a poet, a painter, a civic official, a botanist, and a

tourist. The forest is objectively always the same. It is a real, indivisible unity of all the determinations and

relationships out of which the interested parties select each a certain group, and make it into a picture of the

forest. The same is the case with the great systems of interest of which a civilization is composed. We

distinguish, for instance, interests and relationships as the ethical, the egoistic, the economic, the domestic,

etc. The reciprocal weaving together of these constitutes actual life. Certain of these, however, dissociated

from this concrete reality, constitute the content of the civic structure. The state is an abstraction of energies

and reciprocal actions which, in the concrete, exist only within a unity that is not separable into its parts.

Again, in like manner, pedagogy abstracts from the web of cosmic contents into the totality of which the

pupil is subsequently to enter certain ones, and forms them into a world which is completely abstract, in

comparison with reality. In this world the pupil is to live. To what extent all art runs a 'division line of its own

through the conditions of things, in addition to those that are traced out in the real structure of the objective

world, needs no elaboration. In opposition to that naturalism which wanted to lead art away from the selective

abstraction, and to open to it the whole breadth and unity of reality, in which all elements have equally rights,

in so far as they are actualprecisely in opposition to this has criticism shown the complete impracticability

of the tendency,. and that even the extremest purpose, to be satisfied in art only with undifferentiated

completeness of the object, must at last end in an abstraction. It will merely be the product of another

selective. principle. Accordingly,. this is one of the formulas in which we may express the relation of man to

the world, viz., from the unity and the interpenetration of things in which each bears the other and all have

equal rights our practice not less than our theory constantly abstracts isolated elements, and forms them into

unities relatively complete in themselves. Except in quite general feelings, we have no relationship to the

totality of being. Only when in obedience to the necessities of our thought and action we derive perpetual

abstractions from phenomena, and endow these with the relative independence of a merely subjective

coherence to which the continuity of the worldmovement as objective gives no room, do we reach a

relationship to the. world that is definite in its details. Indeed, we may adopt a scale of values for our culture

systems, according to the degree in which they combine the demands of our singular purposes with the

possibility of passing over without a gap from each abstraction which they present to the other, so that a

subsequent combination is possible which approximates that objective coherence and unity. Accordingly, the

economic system of the world is assuredly founded upon an abstraction, that is, upon the relation of

reciprocity and exchange, the balance between sacrifice and gain; while in the actual process in which this

takes place it is inseparably amalgamated with its foundations and its results, the desires and the satisfactions.

But this form of existence does not distinguish it from the other territories into which, for the purposes of our

The objectivity of economic value which we assume as defining the scope of economics, and which is

thought as the independent characteristic of the same in distinction from its subjective vehicles and

consequences, consists in its being true of many, or rather all, subjects. The decisive factor is its extension in

principle beyond the individual. The fact that for one object another must be given shows that not merely for

me, but also for itself, that is, also for another person, the object is of some value. The appraisal takes place in

The exchange of objects, moreover,. in which this objectivication, and therewith the specific character of

economic activity, realizes itself belongs, from the standpoint of each of the contracting parties, in the quite

general category of gain and loss, purpose and means. If any object over which we have control is to help us

to the possession or enjoyment of another, it is generally under the condition that we forego the enjoyment of

its own peculiar worth. As a rule the purpose consumes either the substance or the force of the means, so that

the value of the same constitutes the price which must be paid for the value of the purpose. Only within

certain spiritual interests is that not the case as a rule. The mind has been properly compared to a fire, in

which countless candles may be lighted without loss of its own peculiar intensity. For example, intellectual

products sometimes (not always) retain for purposes of instruction their own worth, which does not lose any

of its independent energy and significance by functioning as means to the pedagogical end. In the case of

causal series in external nature, however, the relationship is usually different. Here must the object, if on the

one hand it is conceived immediately as valuable, and on the other hand as means to the attainment of another

value, be sacrificed as a value in itself, in order to perform its office as means. This procedure rules all values

the enjoyment of which is connected with a conscious action on our part. What we call exchange is obviously

nothing but a special case of this typical form in human life. We must regard this, however, not merely as a

placing of exchange in the universal category of creation of value; but, conversely, this latter as an exchange

in the wider sense of the word. This possibility, which has so many consequences for the theory of value, will

become clear by the discussion of the doctrine that all economic value consists in exchange value.

To this theory the objection has been made that even the quite isolated economic man he who neither sells

nor buys must estimate his products and means of production according to their value, if expenditures and

results are to stand in proper relation to each other. This objection, however, is not so striking as it appears,

for all consideration whether a definite product is worth enough to justify a definite expenditure of labor or

other goods is, for the economic agent, precisely the same as the appraisal which takes place in connection

with exchange. In confronting the concept,, exchange,, there is frequently the confusion of ideas which

consists in speaking of a relationship as though it were something apart from the elements between which it

plays. It means, however, only a condition or a change within each of these elements, but nothing that is

between them in the sense of a spatial object that can be distinguished in space between two other objects.

When we compose the two acts or changes of condition which in reality take place into the notion

"exchange," the conception is attractive that something has happened in addition to or beyond that which took

place in each of the contracting parties. Considered with reference to its immediate content, exchange is

nothing but the twofold repetition of the fact that an actor now has something which he previously did not

have, and on the other hand does not have something which he previously had. That being the case, the

isolated economic man, who surely must make a sacrifice to gain certain products, acts precisely like the one

who makes exchanges. The only difference is that the party with whom he contracts is not a second sentient

being, but the natural order and regularity of things, which no more satisfy our desires without a sacrifice on

our part than would another person. His appraisals of value, in accordance with which he governs his actions,

are, as a rule, precisely the same as in the case of exchange; for the economic actor, as such, it is surely quite

immaterial whether the substances or laborenergies in his possession are sunk in the ground or given to

another man, if only there accrues to him the same result from the sacrifice. This subjective process of

sacrifice and gain in the individual soul is by no means something secondary or imitative in comparison with

interindividual exchange; on the contrary, the giveandtake between sacrifice and accomplishment, within

the individual, is the basal presumption, and at the same time the persistent substance, of every twosided

exchange. The latter is merely a subspecies of the former; that is, the sort in which the sacrifice is

occasioned by the demand of another individual. At the same time, it can only be occasioned by the same sort

of result for the actor so far as objects and their qualities are concerned. It is of extreme importance to make

this reduction of the economic process to that which actually takes place, that is, in the soul of every

economic agent. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived about the essential thing by the fact that in the

case of exchange this process is reciprocal; that is, that it is conditioned by the like procedure in another. The

main thing is that the natural and solitary economic transaction, if we may conceive of such a thing, runs back

to the same fundamental form as twosided exchange: to the process of equalization between two subjective

occurrences within the individual. This is in its proper essence not affected by the secondary question

whether the impulse to the process proceeds from the nature of things or the nature of man; whether it is a

matter of purely natural economy or of exchange economy. All feelings of value, in other words, which are

set free by producible objects are in general to be gained only by foregoing other values. At the same time,

such sacrifice may consist, not only in that mediate labor for ourselves which appears as labor for others, but

Moreover, those theories of value which discover in labor the absolute element of value accommodate

themselves to this form of conception as to the higher and more abstract idea. Whoever labors sacrifices

something which he possesses his laborpower, or his leisure, or his pleasure merely in the selfsatisfying

play of his powers in order to get in exchange for these something which he does not possess. Through the

fact that labor accomplishes this it acquires value, just as, on the other side, the attained object is valuable for

the reason that it has cost labor. In so far there is not the slightest ground to give labor a special position as

contrasted with all other conditions of value. The difference between these is only of a quantitative nature.

Labor is the most frequent object of exchange. In this assertion we forbear to enter into the discussion

whether labor or laborpower, and in what form, constitute an object of exchange. Because labor is regarded

as a sacrifice, as something painful, it is performed only when an object can be secured by it which

corresponds to the eudaemonistic or some other demand. If labor were nothing but pleasure, the products that

it wrings from nature would have no value whatever, provided we disregard the difference in abundance of

objects. On the contrary, if objects that satisfy our desires came to us of their own accord, labor would have

no more value. Thus on the whole we may say that, considered from the standpoint of value, every economic

transaction is an exchange, and every single article of value furnishes its additional quota to the total value of

In all the foregoing it is presupposed that a definite scale of value exists in the case of the objects, and that

each of the two objects concerned in the transaction signifies, for the one contracting party the desired gain,

for the other the necessary sacrifice. But this presumption is, as a matter of fact, much too simple. If, as is

necessary, we regard economic activity as a special case of the universal lifeform of exchange, as a sacrifice

in return for a gain, we shall from the beginning suspect something of what takes place within this form,

namely, that the value of the gain is not, so to speak, brought with it, readymade, but it accrues to the

desired object, in part or even entirely, through the measure of the sacrifice demanded in acquiring it. These

cases, which are as frequent as they are important for the theory of value, seem, to be sure, to harbor an

essential contradiction; for they require us to make a sacrifice of value for things which in themselves are

worthless. As a matter of course, no one would forego value without receiving for it at least equal value; and,

on the contrary, that the end should receive its value only through the price that we must give for it could be

the case only in a crazy world. This is now, for immediate consciousness, correct. Indeed, it is more correct

than that popular standpoint is apt to allow in other cases. As a matter of fact, the value which an actor

surrenders for another value can never be greater for this actor himself, under the actual circumstances of the

moment, than the one for which it is given. All contrary appearances rest upon confusion of the value actually

estimated by the actor with the value which the object of exchange in question usually has. For instance,

when one at the point of death from hunger offers a jewel for a piece of bread, he does it only because the

latter, under the given circumstances, is of more value to him than the former. Particular circumstances,

however, are necessary in order to attach to an object a valuation, for every such valuation is an incident of

the whole complex system of our. feelings, which is in constant flux, adaptation, and reconstruction. Whether

these circumstances are exceptional or relatively constant is obviously in principle a matter of indifference.

There can be no doubt, at any rate, that in the moment of the exchange, that is, of the making of the sacrifice,

the value of the exchanged object forms the limit which is the highest point to which the value of the

sacrificed object can rise. Quite independent of this is the question whence that former object derives its so

necessary value, and whether it may come from the objects that are to be sacrificed for it, so that the

equivalence between gain and price would be established at once a posteriori, and by the latter. We shall see

presently how often value comes into existence, psychologically, in this apparently illogical manner. If,

however, it is once in existence, the psychological necessity exists in its case, not less than in that of value

constituted in any other way, of regarding it as a positive good at least equal to the negative good sacrificed

for it. In fact, there is a series of cases in which the sacrifice not merely raises the value of the aim, but even

produces it. It is the joy of exertion, of overcoming difficulties, frequently indeed that of contradiction, which

expresses itself in this process. The necessary detour to the attainment of certain things is often the occasion,

often also the cause, of regarding them as valuable. In the relationships of men to each other, most frequently

and evidently in erotic relations, we notice how reserve, indifference, or repulse inflames the most passionate

desire to conquer in spite of these obstacles, and spurs us to efforts and sacrifices which, without these

obstacles, would surely seem to us excessive. For many people the aesthetic results of ascending the high

Alps would not be considered worth further notice, if it did not demand extraordinary effort and danger, and

if it did not thereby acquire tone, attractiveness, and consecration. The charm of antiquities and curiosities is

frequently no other. If no sort of aesthetic or historical interest attaches to them, a substitute for it is furnished

by the mere difficulty of acquiring them. They are worth just what they cost. This, then, appears secondarily

to mean that they cost what they are worth. Furthermore, all moral merit signifies that for the sake of the

morally desirable deed contrary impulses and wishes must be fought down and sacrificed. If the act occurs

without any conquest, as the matterofcourse outflow of unrestrained impulse, it is not appraised so high in

the scale of subjective moral value, however desirable objectively its content may be. In this latter case we

are not moral in any other sense than the flower is beautiful; we do not reckon the beauty of the flower as an

ethical merit. Only through the sacrifice of the lower and still.so seductive good is the height of moral merit

attained, and a more lofty height, the more attractive the temptation and the deeper and more comprehensive

the sacrifice. We might array illustrations, beginning with the ordinary selfishness of the day, the overcoming

of which alone rewards us with.the consciousness of being somewhat worthy, and rising to that force of logic

whose sacrifice in favor of belief in the absurd seemed to the schoolmen an extreme religious merit. If we

observe which human achievements attain to the highest honors and appraisals, we find it to be always those

which betray a maximum of humility, effort, persistent concentration of the whole being, or at least seem to

betray these. In other words, they seem to manifest the most selfdenial, sacrifice of all that is subsidiary, and

of devotion of the subjective to the objective ideal. And if, in contrast with all this, aesthetic production and

everything easy, inviting, springing from the naturalness of impulse, unfolds an incomparable charm, this

owes its special quality still to the undefined feeling of the burdens and sacrifices which are usually the

condition of gaining such things. The mobility and inexhaustible power of combination of our mental content

frequently brings it about that the significance of a correlation is carried over to its direct converse, somewhat

as the association between two ideas occurs equally when they are asserted or denied of each other. The

specific value of anything which we gain without conquered difficulty and as the gift of fortunate accident is

felt by us only on the ground of the significance which the things have for us that are gained with difficulty

and measured by sacrifice. It is the same value, but with the negative sign, and this is the primary from which

If we look for an occurrence of this relationship within the economic realm, it seems to be demanded, in the

first place, that we shall in thought separate the economic element, as a specific difference or form, from the

fact of value as the universality or the substance of the same. If for the present we take value as a datum, and

not now to be discussed, it is at least, in accordance with all the foregoing, not doubtful that economic value

as such does not accrue to an object in its isolated selfexistence, but only through the employment of

another object which is given for it. Wild fruit picked without effort, and not given in exchange, but

immediately consumed, is no economic good. It can count as such only when its consumption saves some

other sort of economic expense. If, however, all the demands of life were to be satisfied in this fashion, so

that no sacrifice was at any point necessary, men would simply not engage in industry, any more than do the

birds or the fishes, or the denizens of fairyland. Whatever be the way in which the two objects, A and B,

came to have value, A came to have an. economic value only through the fact that I must give B for it, B only

through the fact that I can receive A for it. In this case, as above stated, it is in principle indifferent whether

the sacrifice takes place by means of the transfer of a thing of value to another person, that is, through

interindividual exchange, or within the circle of the individual's own interests, through a balancing of efforts

and results. In the articles of commerce there is nothing to be found but the significance which each has,

directly or indirectly, for our need to consume, and the giveandtake that occurs between them. Since, now,

as we have seen, the former does not of itself suffice to make the given object an object of economic activity,

it follows that the latter alone can supply to it the specific difference which we call economic.

If thus, under the preliminary assumption of an existing value, the economic character of the same coincides

with the offer of another object for it, and of it for the other object, there arises the further question whether

this separation between the value and its economic form is necessary and possible. As a matter of fact, this

artificially dividing abstraction finds in reality no counterpart. In the economic value the economic is as little

sundered from the value as in the economic man the economist is sundered from the man. To be sure, man is

possible in times and relations in which he does not pursue economic activity. The latter, however, is not

possible without being accomplished by men, in absolute unity with them, and only in unreal conceptual

abstraction is it to be sundered from them. Thus there are enough objects of value which are not economic,

but there are no objects of economic value which are not also valuable in every relation in which they are

economic. What is true of the industry, as economic as such is, therefore, true of the values of every condition

or quality or function is necessarily a condition or quality or function of that general object to which this

quality or function pertains. The economic form of the value stands between two boundaries: on the one

hand, the desire for the object, which attaches itself to the anticipated feeling of satisfaction from its

possession and enjoyment; on the other hand, to this enjoyment itself, which, exactly considered, is not an

economic act. That is, so soon as we concede, as is universally the case, what was just now discussed,

namely, that the immediate consumption of wild fruits is not an.economic procedure, and therefore the fruits

themselves have no economic value (except in so far as they save the production of economic values), then

the consumption of values properly economic is no longer economic, for the act of consumption, in this last

case, is not to be distinguished absolutely from that in the first case. Whether the fruit which one eats has

been found accidentally, or stolen or bought, makes not the slightest difference in the act of eating itself, and

in its direct consequences for the eater. Between desire and consumption lies the economic realm in

unnumbered interrelationships. Now, economic activity appears to be an equalization of sacrifices and gains

(of forces or objects), a mere form in the sense that it presupposes values as its content, in order to be able to

draw them into the equalizing movement. But this appearance is not invincible. It will rather appear that the

same process which constructs into an industrial system the values given as presuppositions itself produces

To see this we need only remind ourselves in principle of the fact that the object is for us not a thing of value,

so long as it is dissolved in the subjective process as an immediate stimulator of feelings, and thus at the same

time is a selfevident competence of our sensibility. The object must first be detached from this sensibility, in

order to acquire for our understanding the peculiar significance which we call value. For it is not only sure

that desire, in and of itself, can never establish a value if it does not encounter obstacles. But if every desire

could find its satisfaction without struggle and without diminution, an economic exchange of values would

never come into existence. Indeed, desire itself would never have arisen to any considerable height if it could

satisfy itself thus. It is only the postponement of the satisfaction through obstacles, the anxiety lest the object

may escape, the tension of struggle for it, which brings into existence that aggregate of desire elements which

may be designated as intensity or passion of volition. If, however, even the highest energy of desire were

generated wholly from within, yet we would not accord value to the object which satisfies the desire if it

came to us in unlimited abundance. The important thing, in that case, would be the total enjoyment, the

existence of which guarantees to us the satisfaction of our wishes, but not that particular quantum of which

we actually take possession, because this could be replaced quite as easily by another. Our consciousness

would in this case simply be filled with the rhythm of the subjective desires and satisfactions, without

attaching any significance to the object mediating the satisfaction. The desire, therefore, which on its part

came into existence only through an absence of feelings of satisfaction, a condition of want or limitation, is

the psychological expression of the distance between subject and object, in which the latter is represented as

This distance necessary to the consequence in question is produced in certain cases by exchange, sacrifice,

abstinence from objects; that is, in a word, the foregoing of feelings of satisfaction. This takes place, now, in

the form of traffic cotemporaneous between two actors, each of whom requires of the other the abstinence in

question as condition of the feeling of satisfaction. The feeling of satisfaction, as must be repeatedly

emphasized, would not place itself in antithesis with its object as a value in our consciousness if the value

were always near to us, so that we should have no occasion to separate the object from that consequence in us

which is alone interesting. Through exchange, that is, through the economic system, there arise at the same

time the values of industry, because exchange is the vehicle or producer of the distance between the subject

and the object which transmutes the subjective state of feeling into objective valuation. Kant once

summarized his Theory of Knowledge in the proposition: "The conditions of experience are at the same time

the conditions of the objects of experience." By this he meant that the process which we call experience and

the conceptions which constitute its contents or objects are subject to the selfsame laws of the reason. The

objects can come into our experience, that is, be experienced by us, because they are conceptions in us; and

the same energy which makes and defines the experience has also manifested itself in the structure of the

objects. In the same sense we may say here: the possibility of the economic system is, at the same time, the

possibility of economic objects. The very procedure between two possessors of objects (substances,

laborpowers, rights, exchangeabilities of any sort), which procedure brings them into the socalled

economic relationship, namely, reciprocal dedication, at the same time raises each of these objects into the

category of values. The difficulty which threatens from the side of logic, namely, that the values must first

exist, and exist as values, in order to enter into the form and movement of industry, is now obviated, and by

means of the perceived significance of that psychical relationship which we designated as the distance

between us and the thing; for this differentiates the original subjective state of feeling into, first, the desiring

subject anticipating the feelings; and, second, the object in antithesis with the subject, and containing in itself

the value; while the distance, on its side, is produced by exchange, that is, by the twosided operation of

limitations, restriction, abstinence. The values of industry emerge, therefore, in the same reciprocity and

This transference of the idea of economic value from the character of isolating substantiality into the living

process of relation may be further explained on the ground of those factors which we are accustomed to

regard as the constituents of value, namely, availability and rarity. Availability appears here as the first

condition, based upon the constitution of the industrial actor, under which alone an object can under any

circumstances come into question. in economics. At the same time it is the presupposition of economic

activity. In order that the value may reach a given degree, rarity must be associated with availability, as a

characteristic of the objects themselves. If we wish to fix economic values through demand and supply,

demand would correspond with availability, supply with rarity. For the availability would decide whether we

demand the object at all, the rarity the price which we are compelled to pay. The avail. ability serves as the

absolute constituent of the economic as that the extent of which must be determined in order that it may

come into the course of economic exchange. We must from the beginning concede rarity as a merely relative

element, since it means exclusively the quantitative relation in which the object in question stands to the

existing aggregate of its kind; the qualitative nature of the object is not touched by its rarity. The availability,

however, seems to exist before all economic action, all comparison, all relation with other objects, and as the

substantial factor of economic activity, whose movements are dependent upon itself.

The circumstance whose efficacy is herewith outlined is not correctly designated by the notion of utility or

serviceableness. What we mean in reality is the fact that the object is desired. All availability is, therefore, not

in a situation to occasion economic operations with the object possessing the quality, if the availability does

not at the same time have as a consequence that the objects are desired. As a matter of fact, this does not

always occur. Any wish whatever may accord with any coNception of things useful to us; actual desire,

however, which has economic significance and which sets our acts in motion, is not present in such wishes in

case long poverty, constitutional laziness, diversion into other regions of interest, indifference of feeling

toward the theoretically recognized utility, perceived impossibility of attaining the desired object, and other

positive and negative elements work in the contrary direction. On the other hand, many sorts of things are

desired by us, and also economically valued, which we cannot designate as useful or available without

arbitrary distortion of verbal usage. Since, however, not everything that is available is also desired, if we

decide to subsume everything. that is economically desired under the concept of "availability", it is logically

demanded that we shall make the fact of being desired the definitively decisive element for economic

movement. Even with this correction the criterion is not absolute, totally separable from the relativity of

valuation. In the first place, as we saw above, the desire itself does not come to conscious definiteness unless

obstacles, difficulties, interpose themselves between the object and the subject. We do not desire actually

until enjoyment of the object measures itself upon intermediaries, where at least the price of patience, of

resignment of other exertion or enjoyment, places at a distance from us the object to conquer which is the

essence of desire for it. Its economic value now, second, which rises upon the basis of its being desired, can

consist only in heightening or sublimating of that relativity which resides in desire. For the desired object

does not pass into practical value, that is, into value that enters into the industrial movement, until its

desirability is compared with that of another object, and thereby acquires a measure. Only when a second

object is present, with reference to which I am sure that I am willing to give it for the first object, or vice

versa, has each of the two an assignable economic value. The mere desire for an object does not lead to this

valuation, since it finds in itself alone no measure. Only the comparison of desires, that is, the

exchangeability of their objects, fixes each of the same as a value defined in accordance with its scale, that is,

an economic value. The intensity of the individual desire, in and of itself, need not have a cumulative effect

upon the economic value of the object, for since the latter comes to expression only in exchange, desire can

determine it only in so far as it modifies the exchange. If now I desire an object very intensely, its exchange

value is not thereby determined; for either I have the object not yet in my possession; in which case my

desire, if I do not manifest it, can exert no influence upon the demand of the present possessor; he will rather

adjust his claims according to the measure of his own interest in the object, or in accordance with his

suppositions with reference to average interest; or, I have the object in my possession; in which case my

terms will be either so high that the object is entirely excluded from exchange, in which instance it is to that

extent no longer an economic value, or my demands must fall to the measure of the interest which a

calculating person takes in the object. The decisive factor is this: that the economic, practically effective

value is never a value in the abstract, but rather in its essence and idea a determined quantum of value; that

this quantity in general can come into existence only through measurements of two intensities of desire

against each other; that the form in which this measurement takes place within the industrial system is that of

reciprocal gain and sacrifice; that consequently the economic object does not, as superficially appears,

possess in its desirability an absolute element of value, but rather that this fact of being desired operates to

give the object a value exclusively as being the foundation or the material of an actual or putative exchange.

Even in case we derive the valuation of objects from an absolute motive, namely, the labor expended upon

them, and even if we assert that the value of goods is in inverse ratio to the productive capacity of the labor,

yet we must still recognize the determination of the value of the objects as purely reciprocal, instead of a

derivative from a single absolute standard. This being admitted, there arises the following relationship: A pair

of boots has at a given time the same value as twenty meters of shirting. If now, through a new arrangement,

the total labor demanded for the boots falls to onehalf, they are worth only ten meters of shirting. Suppose

now the labor time demanded for shirting is reduced onehalf by improved machinery; the boots will then

once more be the equivalent to twenty meters of shirting. If, again, the corresponding improvement affects all

the laborers, and no goods are introduced which affect the relations between them, the two articles remain

unchanged in their value as expressed in terms of each other. The change in the productive power of labor has

an influence upon the value of the products only when it affects isolated portions of the economic organism,

but not when it affects the organism as a whole. However we may exert ourselves, therefore, to express the

value of the object through an absolute quantitative symbol, however qualified, it remains still only the

relation, in which the various wares participate in this vehicle of value, which determines the value of each.

Even under that presupposition, it is for the value of the separate objects as individuals wholly irrelevant how

much or how little labor is invested in them. Only in so far as it is a quantity of labor greater or less in

comparison with the quantity of labor invested in another object does each of the two acquire an

economically effective value. But for the same reason it is, on the other hand, also unwarranted to complain

at absence of the necessary stability of value in the daily wage of labor by which expression it is implied

that the average return of a day's labor is a valueunity. That accusation is founded on the fact that the labor

day constantly increases in productivity and power in exchange. Assuming, however, for the moment that

labor is the one creator of value, the value of the timeunit of labor for the purpose of exchange of related

goods is always the same; although, absolutely considered, it has increased, and corresponds to a larger

quantum of each separate product. Since the reciprocal relation of the goods has remained the same, the

relation of the labor time to each is the same as to the others. It may, therefore, remain, for the purpose of

This relativity of value, in consequence of which the given things stimulating feeling and desire come to be

values only in the reciprocity of the giveandtake process, appears to lead to the consequence that value is

nothing but the price, and that between the two objects no differences of scale can exist. Consequently, the

frequent falling away of the two from each other would refute the theory. Against that undeniable fact of

varying ratio our theory asserts, to be sure, that there would never have been such a thing as a value if the

universal phenomenon which we call price had not emerged. That a thing is worth something in a purely

economic sense means that it is worth something to me, that is, that I am ready to give something for it. What

in the world can move us to go beyond that naive subjective enjoyment of the things themselves, and to credit

to them that peculiar significance which we call their value? This certainly cannot come from their scarcity in

and of itself, for if this existed simply as a fact, and were not in some way or other modifiable by us, we

would regard it as a natural, and, on account of the defective differentiations, perhaps entirely unrecognized,

quality of the external cosmos. For, since it could not be otherwise; it would receive no emphasis beyond its

inherent qualities. This valuation arises only from the fact that something must be paid for things: the

patience of waiting, the effort of search, the application of laborpower, the abstinence from things otherwise

desirable. Without price, therefore price originally in this extensive sense value does not come into

being. That of two objects the one is more valuable than the other comes to pass subjectively as well as

objectively only where one agent is ready to give this for that, but conversely that is not to be obtained for

this. In transactions that have not become complicated the higher or lower value can be only the consequence

or the expression of this immediate practical will to exchange. And if we say we exchange the things for each

other because they are equally valuable, it is only that frequent inversion of thought and speech by which we

also say that things pleased us because they were beautiful, whereas, in reality, they are beautiful because

If, thus, value is at the same time the offspring of price, it seems to be an identical proposition that their

height must be the same. I refer now to the above proof, that in each individual case no contracting party pays

the price which is to him, under the given circumstances, too high for the thing obtained. If in the poem of

Chamisso the highwayman at the point of the pistol compels the victim to sell him his watch and rings for

three coppers, the fact is that under the circumstances, since the victim could not otherwise save his life, the

thing obtained in exchange was actually worth the price. No laborer would work for starvation wages if, in

the situation in which he actually found himself, he did not prefer this wage to not working. The appearance

of paradox in the assertion of the equivalence of value and price in every individual case arises only from the

fact that certain conceptions of other kinds of equivalence of value and price are brought into our estimate of

the case. The relative stability of the relationships by which the majority of exchanges are determined; on the

other hand the analogies which fix still uncertain valuerelations according to the norm of others already

existing, produce the conceptions: if for a definite object this and that other definite object were exchange

equivalents, these two or this group of objects would have equality in the scale of value; and if abnormal

circumstances caused us to exchange the one object for values higher or lower in the scale, price and value

would fall away from each other, although in each individual case, as a matter of fact, under consideration of

its circumstances, they would coincide. We should not forget that the objective and just equivalence of value

and price which we make the norm of the actual and the specific works only under very definite historical and

technical conditions; and, with change of these conditions, at once vanishes. Between the norm itself and the

cases which are characterized as exceptional or as adequate no general difference exists, but, so to speak,

only a numerical difference somewhat as we say of an extraordinarily eminent or degraded individual,

"He is really no longer a man." The fact is that this idea of man is only an average; it would lose its normative

character at the moment in which the majority of men ascended or descended to that grade, which then would

In order to reach this perception we must, to be sure, extricate ourselves from deeprooted conceptions of

value, which also have an assured practical justification. These conceptions, in the case of relationships that

are somewhat complex, rest in two strata with reference to each other. The one is formed from the traditions

of society, from the majority of experiences, from demands that seem to be purely logical; the other, from

individual correlations, from the demands of the moment, from the constraint of given facts. In contrast with

the rapid changes within this latter stratum, the gradual evolution of the former and its construction out of

elaboration of our perceptions is lost to sight, and the former appears as alone justified as the expression of an

objective ratio. Where now, in case of an exchange under the given circumstances, the valuations of sacrifice

and gain at least balance each other for otherwise no agent would consummate the exchange yet

judged by those general criteria a discrepancy appears, in such a case we speak of a divergence between value

and price. This occurs most decisively under the two presuppositions (almost always united), viz., first, that a

single valuequality passes as economic value in general, and two objects consequently can be recognized as

equal in value, only in so far as the like quantum of that fundamental value is present in them; and, second,

that a definite proportion between two values appears as a something that must be, with the emphasis of a not

merely objective, but also a moral demand. The conception, for example, that the essential valueelement in

all values is the labor time objectified in them is utilized in both these assumptions, and thus gives a direct or

an indirect standard which fixes the value independent of price, and makes the latter vibrate in changing plus

and minus differences, as compared with the former. Now it is evident, to be sure, that if we from the start

recognize only a single valuesubstance, only that price corresponds to the value so contained which contains

precisely an equivalent amount of that same value. According to this principle the value should be the first

and fixed element; the price should constitute a more or less adequate secondary element. But this

consequence, supposing everything else is conceded, does not in fact follow. The fact of that single measure

of value leaves entirely unexplained how laborpower comes to have value. It would hardly have occurred if

the laborpower had not, by acting upon various materials and by creating various products, made the

possibility of exchange; or unless the exercise of the power had been recognized as a sacrifice made for the

gain of the object achieved by the sacrifice. Thus laborpower also comes into the valuecategory through

the possibility and reality of exchange, quite unaffected by the circumstance that later laborpower may itself

furnish a measure, within the valuecategory, for the other contents. If the laborpower is thus also the

content of that value, it receives its form as value only through the fact that it enters into the relation of

sacrifice and gain, or price and value (here in the narrower sense). In the cases of discrepancy between price

and value, the one contracting party would, according to this theory, give a quantum of immediately

realizable laborpower for a lesser quantum of the same. Yet other circumstances, not containing

laborpower, are in such wise connected with this case that the party still completes the exchange; for

example: the satisfaction of an economic need, amateurish fancy, fraud, monopoly, and similar

circumstances. In the wider and subjective sense, therefore, the equivalence of value and countervalue

remains in these cases, while the simple norm, laborpower, which makes the discrepancy possible, does not

The qualitative determination of objects, which subjectively signifies their desirability, can consequently not

maintain the claim of constituting an absolute valuemagnitude. It is always the relation of the desires to each

other, realized in exchange, which makes their objects economic values. This determination appears more

immediately in connection with the other element supposed to constitute value, namely, scarcity, or relative

rarity. Exchange is, indeed, nothing else than the interindividual attempt to improve conditions rising out of

scarcity of goods; that is, to reduce as far as possible the amount of subjective abstinence by the mode of

distributing the given stock. Thereupon follows immediately a universal correlation between that which we

call scarcityvalue and that which we call exchangevalue, a correlation which appears, for instance, in the

relation of socialism to both. We may, perhaps, indicate the economic purposes of socialism comprehensively

and abstractly in this way, namely, that it strives to abolish scarcityvalue; that is, that modification of the

value of things which arises from their rarity or abundance; for it is abundance which reduces the value of

labor. There should be less labor, in order that labor may be appraised according to the qualityvalue, without

depression on account of the quantity. On the other hand, the means of enjoyment should lose that value

which they now have on account of their restricted quantity; that is, they should be accessible to all.

Accordingly, Marx held that in the capitalistic type of society, that is, the sort of society which socialism

wishes to abolish, exchangevalue alone is decisive, while usevalue no longer plays any role. While

socialism despises exchangevalue quite as much as scarcityvalue, it calls attention to the radical

For us, however, the connection is more important in the reverse direction. I have already emphasized the fact

that scarcity of goods would scarcely have a valuation of them as a consequence if it were not modifiable by

us. It is, however, modifiable in two ways: either through devotion of laborpower, which increases the stock

of the goods in question, or through devotion of already possessed objects, which as substitutes abolish the

rarity of the most desired objects for the individual. Accordingly, we may say immediately that the scarcity of

goods in proportion to the desires centering upon them objectively determines exchange; that, however, the

exchange on its side brings scarcity into force as an element of value. It is a thoroughgoing mistake of

theories of value to assume that, when utility and rarity are given, economic value that is, exchange

movement is something to be taken for granted, a conceptually necessary consequence of those premises.

In this they are by no means correct. In case, for instance, there were alongside of these presuppositions an

ascetic renunciation, or if they only instigated to conflict or robbery which is, to be sure, often enough the

case no economic value and no economic life would emerge. Exchange is a sociological structure sui

generis, a primary form and function of interindividual life, which by no means emerges as a logical

consequence from those qualitative and quantitative properties of things which we call availability and rarity.

On the contrary, it is rather the case that these two properties derive their valuecreating significance only

under the presupposition of exchange. Where exchange, the offering of a sacrifice for the purpose of a gain, is

for any reason excluded, there no rarity of the desired object can confer upon it economic value until the

possibility of that relation reappears. We may express the relation in this way: The significance of the object

for the individual always rests merely in its desirability; so far as that is concerned which the object is to do

for us, its qualitative character is decisive, and when we have it, it is a matter of indifference in this respect

whether there exist besides many, few, or no specimens of the same sort. (I do not treat here especially the

cases in which rarity itself is a species of qualitative character, which makes the object desirable to us, as in

the case of old postage stamps, curiosities, antiquities without aesthetic or historical value, etc. I also

disregard. other cases, interesting in themselves, here however in principle insignificant, namely, those

psychological subsidiary phenomena which frequently arise from scarcity itself, where they have no effect

upon acquisition of the object.) The enjoyment of things, therefore, so soon as possession of them is

achieved, the positive practical significance of their actuality for us, is quite independent of the scarcity

question, since this affects only a numerical relation to things, which we do not have, to be sure, but which,

according to the hypothesis, we do not desire to have. The only question in point with reference to things,

apart from enjoyment of them, is the way to them. So soon as this way is a long and difficult one, leading

over sacrifice in the shape of strain of the patience, disappointment, labor, selfdenial, etc., we call the object

scarce. Paradoxical as it is, things are not difficult to obtain because they are scarce, but they are scarce

because they are difficult to obtain. The inflexible external fact that there is a deficient stock of certain goods

to satisfy all our desires for them would be in itself insignificant. Whether they are scarce in the sense of

economic value is decided simply by the circumstance of the measure of energy, patience, devotion to

acquisition, which is necessary in order to obtain them. Let us suppose a stock of goods which suffices to

cover all the demands centered upon it, but which is so disposed that every portion of it is to be obtained only

with considerable effort and sacrifice. Then the result for its valuation and its practical significance would be

precisely the same which, under the presupposition of equal availability, we have been accustomed to derive

from its scarcity. The difficulty of attainment, that is, the magnitude of the sacrifice involved in exchange, is

thus the element that peculiarly constitutes value. Scarcity constitutes only the external appearance of this

element, only the externalizing of it in the form of quantity. We fail to observe that scarcity, purely as such, is

only a negative property, an existence characterized by a nonexistence. The nonexistent, however, cannot

be operative. Every positive consequence must proceed from a positive property and force, of which that

negative property is only the shadow. These concrete energies are, however, manifestly only those that are

put into action in the exchange, so that the increase of value starts from that increasing magnitude whose

Finally, by way of corollary, I will add a more conceptual deduction, namely, that the usual conception of the

scarcity theory must presuppose the value which it tries to derive from scarcity. According to this conception,

an object of economic desire acquires value if no unlimited number of specimens of its kind is at hand; that

is, if the present quantity of such objects does not cover a series of needs that look to it for satisfaction. The

failure of these needs to be covered is felt as a painful condition which ought not to be, as the negation of

value. The covering of these needs must be something having value. Otherwise the failure could exert no

such effect. If, however, this defect is necessary to establish the value of the present quantity, the value is

thereby presupposed whose establishment is in question. The existing quantity has value because the lacking

quantity has value. Otherwise its lack could never establish a value. Let us suppose the quantity A, which

would completely cover the need, to be divided into two parts: first, the portion actually present, M, and,

second, the merely ideally present, N. According to the theory, the value M is determined by the fact that N is

not present. N must, as we said, have a value in order to produce this consequence. In order that it may have

this value, we must, however, think it as present, and, on the contrary, M as not present. Otherwise the whole

of A would be accessible, and therefore, according to the scarcity theory, no portion of it would have a value.

The value of the actual quantity is based on that of the nonexisting quantity, that of the nonexisting

quantity (which I must think in this connection as present) on that of the existing quantity (which I must think

as nonexistent). The scarcity element is thus to be accounted for only relatively, equally with that element

which has its source in the significance of the object for the feelings. As little as the fact of being desired can

scarcity create for the object a valuation otherwise than in the reciprocal relation with another object existing

under like conditions. We may examine the one object ever so closely with reference to its selfsufficient

properties, we shall never find the economic value; since this consists exclusively in the reciprocal

relationship, which comes into being between several objects on the basis of these properties, each

determining the other, and each giving to the other the significance which each in turn receives from the