Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/593

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Volume V MARCH, I QOO Numbers

A CHAPTER IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE.'

The fact of economic exchange confers upon the value of things something super-individual. It detaches them from disso- lution 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 counter- weight, 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 con- tracting parties appears much more as something outside of these latter and self-existent 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

'A fragment from a volume entitled The Philosophy of Money to be published this year by Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig. Translated for this Journal from the author's manuscript.

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