I find this particularly interesting, since it employs a device which had once suggested itself to me as a means of escape from the Austrian circle, but which reflection led me to abandon. I have discussed the whole matter in my _Social Value_, and therefore venture a quotation from that book.[95]
"How are we to get out of our circle:[96] The value of a good, A, depends, in part, upon the value embodied in the goods, B, C, and D, possessed by the persons for whom good A has 'utility,' and whose 'effective demand' is a _sine qua non_ of A's value? The most convenient point of departure seems to be the simple situation which Wieser has assumed in his _Natural Value._[97] Here the 'artificial' complications due to private property and to the difference between rich and poor are gone, and only 'marginal utility' is left as a regulator of values. But what about value in a situation where there are differences in 'purchasing power'? How assimilate the one situation to the other?
"A _temporal regressus_, back to the first piece of wealth, which, we might assume, depended for its value solely upon the facts of utility and scarcity, and the existence of which furnished the first 'purchasing power' that upset the order of 'natural value,' might be interesting, but certainly would not be convincing. In the first place, there is no unbroken sequence of uninterrupted economic causation from that far away hypothetical day to the present, in the course of which that original quantity of value has exerted its influence. The present situation does not differ from Wieser's situation simply in the fact that some, more provident than others, have saved where others have consumed, have been industrious where others have been idle, and so have accumulated a surplus of value, which, used to back their desires, makes the wants of the industrious and provident count for more than the wants of others. And even if these were the only differences, it is to be noted that private property has somehow crept in in the interval, for Wieser's was a communistic society. And further, an emotion felt ten thousand years ago could scarcely have any very direct or certain quantitative connection with value in the market to-day. Even if there had been no 'disturbing factors' of a non-economic sort, the process of 'economic causation' could not have carried a value so far. It is the living emotion that counts! Values depend every moment upon the force of live minds, and need to be constantly renewed. And there would have been, of course, many 'non-economic' disturbances, wars and robberies, frauds and benevolences, political and religious changes--a host of historical occurrences affecting the weight of different elements in society in a way that, by historical methods, it is impossible to treat quantitatively.[98]