an Alternative Explanation of Human, Value, and Money based on a Sociological Approach to Economic Man

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

1 Researcher of the Islamic Parliament Research Center Of The Islamic Republic Of IRAN

2 Professor of Economics, Faculty of Economics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Although the Walras's framework, as the basis of the micro theory of neoclassical economics in explaining the basis of "economic value", includes the preferences of economic actors (with the nature of subjective categories) in its calculations, But because it considers these preferences fixed, ranked and unrelated to the actions of other people; inevitably, it assigns some value to different goods, which can be considered as the concrete and inherent value of the goods. In this view, money is taken as a secondary entity and merely a counter of the intrinsic value of goods, which facilitates the exchange of goods with intrinsic values as a "neutral medium". On the contrary, in this research, in order to provide an alternative explanation of value and money, a sociological approach is invoked. The specific question of the current research is whether each product has a unique intrinsic and fundamental value? To answer this question, a sociological understanding of economic man has been presented in such a way that if human action is analyzed in the context of society, inherently different results will be obtained. The result of the research indicated that value is not an objective reality separate from the exchange and an intrinsic property of the commodity, but the value is a mental idea arising from collective action and judgment. It is money that can visualize the valuation of goods and facilitate market exchanges by referring to price sets. The feature of money is that it embodies the concept of economic value and, consequently, markets were born. The main implication: contrary to the neoclassical theoretical framework, The intrinsic and fundamental value of a commodity has no place in alternative theory

Keywords

References

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