As phases in the "presuppositions" of economic value, then, coördinate with "marginal utility," our theory puts the legal and ethical values concerned with distribution, which rule in a community at a given time. Reinforcing and validating the values of _goods_ are the social values of _men_. President F. A. Walker[169] defines value as "the power an article confers upon its possessor _irrespective of legal authority or personal sentiments_, of commanding, in exchange for itself, the labor, or the products of the labor, of others." [Italics are mine.] In our view, this definition is precisely wrong. A change in laws or in morals respecting the social ranking of men, respecting property rights, will at once affect economic values. Earlier economists often wrote as if distribution were primarily a physically determined matter, and so we got from them an "Iron Law of Wages," etc. But it is pertinent to quote from one who, though in many ways allied to the older school, and in value theory avowedly their follower, still stands as a bridge between the theories I am criticizing and my own. John Stuart Mill[170] says:--
The laws and conditions of the production of wealth, partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them.... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms. Further, in the social state, in every state except total solitude, any disposal whatever of them can only take place by the consent of society, or rather of those who dispose of its active force. Even what a person has produced by his individual toil, unaided by any one, he cannot keep, unless by the permission of society. Not only can society take it from him, but individuals could and would take it from him, if society only remained passive; if it did not either interfere _en masse_, or employ and pay people for the purpose of preventing him from being disturbed in the possession. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined, are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.