A Clarification of the Concept of "Instrumental Valuation" in Institutional Economics
The terms "instrumental valuation" and "instrumental valuing" are common in the literature of neoinstitutional economics. They are, of course, adapted from the work of the most influential philosopher America has produced, John Dewey (1859-1952). However, their explication and dissemination among evolutionary economists has been largely the work of economists Clarence Ayres (1891-1972), Fagg Foster (1907-1985), Allan Gruchy (1906-1990), and, more recently, Wendell Gordon and Marc Tool.' These terms denote the basic approach to the social value theory of neoinstitutional economists and are viewed as the alternative to the utilitarian theory(s) of neoclassicism, the Marxian labor theory of value, and the Kantian or Christian approach of social economists. What Morton White exaggeratedly called "the revolt against formalism" in American social thought two generations ago did not a school of thought make.2 Institutional economics and pragmatic philosophy earlier clearly drew from a highly eclectic stock of ideas and intellectual