Value and utility in a historical perspective

Pogany, Peter (2012): Value and utility in a historical perspective.

Abstract

Since value and utility are the highest profile abstractions that underlie an epoch’s intellectual climate and ethical principles, their evolution reflects the transformation of socioeconomic conditions and institutions. The “Classical Phase” flourished during the first global system, laissez-faire/metal money/zero multilateralism (GS1); the second, “Subjective/Utilitarian” phase marked the long transition to the current epoch of “Modern Subjectivism/General Equilibrium,” tied to the second and extant global system, mixed economy/minimum reserve banking/weak multilateralism (GS2). History has witnessed the material de-essentialization of value and substantialization of utility. But now the two concepts face a thorough transvaluation as the world’s combined demographic and economic expansion encounters ecological/physical limitations. An extended macrohistoric implosion may lead to a third form of global self-organization: two-level economy/maximum bank reserve money/strong multilateralism (GS3). If history unfolds along the suggested path, not only economics, but also thinking about economics would change. It would be considered an evolving hermeneutic of the human condition expressed through global-system-specific texts. The implied critical alteration, with the recognition of the entropy law’s importance as its focal point, matches the prediction of Swiss thinker Jean Gebser (1905-1973) about the impending mutation of human consciousness into its integral/arational structure. Such extrapolations form the context in which the fourth historical phase of value and utility is hypothesized, leading to the material re-essentialization of value and de-substantialization of utility.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: value; utility; new historical materialism; a new take on universal history
• Subjects: A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A12 - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z10 - General; N - Economic History > N0 - General > N00 - General; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q0 - General > Q01 - Sustainable Development; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B0 - General > B00 - General

References

Arrow, K. (1950), “A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare,” Journal of Political Economy, August 58(4), pp. 328-346.

Baumol, W. J. (1985), “On Method in U.S. Economics a Century Later,” The American Economic Review, vol. 75, no. 6 (December), pp. 1-12.

Bernanke, B.S. (1983), “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression,” The American Economic Review, vol. 73, no. 3 (June), pp. 257-276.

Berlin I. (1954), Historical Inevitability, (Auguste Comte Memorial Trust Lecture No. 1), Oxford University Press, London, UK.

Block N., Flanagan O. and Güzeldere, G. (eds.) (1998), The Nature of Consciousness; Philosophical Debates, A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Bowles S. and Gintis H. (1975), “The Problem with Human Capital Theory – A Marxian Critique,” The American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings of the Eighty-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May): 74-82.

Coddington A. (1975), “The Rationale of General Equilibrium Theory,” Economic Inquiry, vol. 13, no. 4.

Combs A. (1996), Radiance of Being: Complexity, Chaos, and the Evolution of Consciousness, Paragon House, St. Paul, MN.

Common M. and Stagle, S. (2005), Ecological Economics, An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.

Christensen L.R., Jorgenson D.W., and Lau L.J. (1975), “Transcendental Logarithmic Utility Functions,“ The American Economic Review (June): 367-383.

Daly H. and Farley J. (2004), Ecological Economics, Principles and Applications, Pearson and Longman, Delhi, India.

Deaton A. and Muellbauer J. (1980), Economics and Consumer Behavior, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.

Debreu G. (1959), Theory of Value, New Haven and London, Yale University Press.

Deffeyes K.S. (2010), When Oil Peaked, Hill and Wang, A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY.

Diederen A. (2010), Global Resource Depletion, Managed Austerity and the Elements of Hope, Eburon Academic Publishers, Delft, The Netherlands.

Dopfer K. (ed.) (2005), The Evolutionary Foundation of Economics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Feldman A. and Kirman A. (1974), “Fairness and Envy,” The American Economic Review (December): 995-1005.

Feuerstein G. (1987), Structures of Consciousness, The Genius of Jean Gebser -- An Introduction and Critique , Integral Publishing, Lower Lake, CA.

Gadamer H-G. (2003), Truth and Method, The Continuum Publishing Company, New York, NY.

Gebser J. (1984), The Ever-Present Origin, Ohio University Press, Athens, OH.

Gebser J. (1975), Transformation of the West, Novalis Verlag AG, Schaffhausen, Switzerland (in German).

Georgescu-Roegen N. (1971), The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Georgescu-Roegen N. (1975), “Energy and Economic Myths,” Southern Economic Journal, vol. 41, no. 3.

Guesnerie, R. (1992), “An Exploration of the Eductive Justifications of the Rational-Expectations Hypothesis,” The American Economic Review vol. 82, no. 5 (December), pp. 1254-1278.

Hall C.A.S. (ed.) (1995), Maximum Power, The Ideas and Applications of H.T. Odum, University Press of Colorado, Niwot, CO.

Heidegger M. (2006), Being and Time (J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson translators), Balckwell Publishing, Malden, MA.

Hicks J.R. (1946), Value and Capital, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, London, U.K.

Ifcher J. and Zarghamee H. (2011) “Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment,” The American Economic Review 101 (December): 3109-3129.

Jing Chen (2005), The Physical Foundation of Economics, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Singapore.

Keynes J.M. (1965), The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, A Harbinger Book, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, NY.

Kondepundi D. and Prigogine I. (1998), Modern Thermodynamics, From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Lukacs G. (1999), History and Class Consciousness, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Marshall H.D. (1967), The Great Economists; A History of Economic Thought, Pitman Publishingb Corporation, New York, N.Y.

Marx K. (Copyright 1906), Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, The Modern Library, New York, N.Y.

Marx K. and Engels F. (1972), The Marx-Engels Reader, (Tucker, R.C. ed.), W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY.

Meadows E. H., Meadows D.L., and Randers J. (1992), Beyond the Limits, Chelsea Green Publishing Co., White River Junction, VT.

Mickunas A. (1998), “Historical Consciousness,” paper presented at the Husserl Circle Conference, Seattle University, Seattle, WA.

Mickunas A. (2007), “Hermeneutics; An Introduction,”appeared under the title "Hermeneutics and Science" in Cultura de Guatemala, Tercera Epoca: Ano XXVIII, pp. 293-320.

Mickunas A. (2004), “The Primacy of Expression,” The Body in Human Inquiry, (Berdayes, V., ed.), Hampton Press, Cresskill, N.J., pp. 33-50.

Muth J.F. (1961), “Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements,” Econometrica 26:6, pp. 315-335.

Olszevwski W. and Sandroni A. (2011), “Falsifiability,” The American Economic Review 101 (April): 788-818.

Pearce D.W. and Turner R.K. (1990), Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MA.

Pogany P. (2006), Rethinking the World, Shenandoah Valley Research Press/iUniverse, Lincoln, NE.

Polanyi K. (1957), The Great Transformation, Beacon Press, Beacon Hill, Boston, MA.

Popper K. R. (1961), The Poverty of Historicism, Harper Torchbooks, New York, NY.

Prigogine I. (1997), The End of Certainty, The Free Press, New York, NY.

Ramey V.A. and Francis N. (2009), “A Century of Work and Leisure,” The American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 1:2, 189-224.

Robinson J. (1962), Economic Philosophy, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY.

Rosser J.B. Jr. (1991), A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA.

Samuelson P.A. (1948), Foundations of Economic Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Schumpeter J.A. (1954), History of Economic Analysis, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

Sen, A. (1999), “The Possibility of Social Choice,” The American Economic Review, vol. 89, no. 3 (June), pp. 349-378.

Simmel G. (2004), The Philosophy of Money, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York, NY.

Stewart D. and Mickunas A. (1990), Exploring Phenomenology, Guide to the Field and its Literature, Ohio University Press, Athens, OH.

Wilson E.O. (2000), Sociobiology, the New Synthesis, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Yates E.Y. (ed.) (1987), Self-Organizing Systems, The Emergence of Order, Plenum Press, New York, NY.