Social Values in Economics

Social values and social cost, social production and social consump? tion, socioeconomic efficiency and socioeconomic markets constitute the central concepts of the theory of social economics. While not systematically analyzed, all of these concepts appear in the writings of John Maurice Clark. Available space limits this discussion mainly to social values. The central concern is to discover the meaning of social values and their relationship to economic values in the social economy. It should be said at once that Clark employs three concepts of social values. There are first the social attitudes penetrating in the economic choices of goods and services made by final consumers. These choice values are followed by the systemic values, in which actors select and believe in those ideals that guide their particular economic system. Final? ly, there are the primarily political values of freedom and liberty which should be respected in economic affairs. While the systemic, or ideological, and political values enjoy a much wider appeal nowadays, the theory of choice values is more fundamental to social economics and will be the primary concern in this paper. In regard to personal commitments, Clark adheres to a limited version of value neutrality. Social economics has several inescapable links to ethics. *Tirst, as science, it has one dominant ethical imperative to find in accordance with the evidence. Second, the economic life which it studies is built upon a basic ethical requirement: the ethics of voluntary coopera? tion. .. In our kind of system, which economizes coercion, there is all the more need of voluntary acceptance of the ethical standards necessary to cooperation, going beyond what law can possibly embody in its formal requirements. [Clark, 1957, p. 32] The principle of value neutrality prevails thus in the sphere of choice values but is replaced by an ethical commitment by actors and analysts in the study and operation of our economic system. This position on value judgments suggests that there are two distinctly different social values. The evidential kind arises in connection with the process of economic exchanges, whereas the ethical values become norms in the process of selecting socioeconomic goals for directing the economy. The question is whether these two kinds of values also appear in an analysis of the actually observable social values or whether ethical values are limited to normative economics

Economics · Neoclassical economics · Positive economics · Sociology · Economic Theory and Institutions

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• Image

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  Arthur Schweitzer•History of Political Economy•1970

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