This conception is, it seems to me, much truer to the spirit of the general marginal utility theory than the theories of Wieser, Schumpeter, or von Mises. If the utility theory at large were valid, the application here would be valid. To Dean Kinley's conception of a marginal utility of the money service, I offer simply the objections which I offer to the utility theory at large--objections indicated in what has gone before, and in my _Social Value_. The application of the capitalization theory to the value of money I have already discussed in a previous chapter, and shall again consider in the chapter on "The Functions of Money."
I conclude that the marginal utility theory has not solved the problem of the value of money. The reason, however, is simply that it has not solved the general problem of value. The marginal utility theory, in so far as it seeks to make marginal utility the _cause_ of value, is circular. The effect of a given man's wants upon the value of the goods he wants depends, not on the marginal intensity of those wants alone--a penniless prisoner may desire a marble palace ever so intensely without affecting its value--but also upon the value of the wealth possessed by the individual who experiences the wants. But this is to explain value, not by marginal utility alone, but by value as well--a circle. Or, if we leave the standpoint of absolute values, and look at the matter in terms of prices, the same situation presents itself. The price which an individual is willing to pay for a good depends on his income,--which commonly rests on prices--and on the prices he has to pay for other goods which enter into his budget. His price-offer, expressive of the marginal utility of a horse to him, is made with consideration of the price of a buggy, of harness, of feed, of the wages of the servant who cares for the horse, the price of a barn, and of the other things that the possession of the horse involves. And not these alone: less immediately, but still vitally, his whole budget enters. Higher prices for theatre tickets or for food or for clothing will reduce his price-offer for a horse. Further, his price-offer for the horse will be tremendously influenced by his opinion as to the permanent market price of horses. He will not be willing to pay a price for the horse which he cannot expect to get back if he should decide later to sell the horse. The direct influence of market price on individual demand-price is very great indeed. Marginal utility (subjective use-value) very frequently gives place to subjective value-in-exchange in the determination of an individual's marginal demand-price--which means that the market controls the individual instead of the individual controlling the market. With sellers, it is _generally_ subjective-exchange-value, rather than marginal utility, that determines supply-price-offer. The sellers, in so far as they are producers, have little need for the great mass of their stocks. They will sell them, rather than keep them, at almost any price. The reason they ask high prices is simply that they think the market will give them the high prices. The individual price-offers, in the aggregate therefore, presuppose the whole market situation--presuppose a general value and price system already fixed and determined. Each individual price offer presupposes many other prices, though not, of course, the whole market. Since, then, much of the market situation is assumed in the determination of each particular price, by the Austrian method, it is obviously circular reasoning to think that the determination of each price separately by this method will supply data for a summary of the market situation as a whole. In the one form in which the utility theory avoids a circle,--that presented by Schumpeter, and discussed in an earlier part of this chapter--it is not a causal theory. Marginal utility is not a cause of market prices, but rather, marginal utilities and market prices are alike resultants, effects, of more fundamental factors. No writer[104] who has presented the utility theory in this form has tried to apply it to the value of money, and even if it could be so applied, it would not give a causal explanation of the value of money in terms of marginal utility. In most of the efforts to apply the utility theory to money, the circle becomes so obvious that one marvels that able theorists should for a moment fail to see it.