ABSTRACT
In the case of the modern, or 'neo-classical,' school the treatment of value is the basis of a deduction of the individual exchange which reveals directly the central unifying principle of all economic thought: the efficient allocation of scarce resources among competing ends. This unifying function is, as we shall see, not simply of a heuristic nature but goes to the heart of neo-classical economics. For the latter exchange reveals directly the operation of'economic behavior.' The exchange of commodities stands as the most elementary of economic relations due to the fact that exchange is the active existence of the inner and hidden force within the otherwise isolated individual. The force which is expressed in exchange is, taken in itself, inaccessible to the investigator. The individual as the locus of needs is a container in which those needs are enclosed and to which only the individual has direct access. Within the exchange need takes on a definite and observable existence. It emerges from its container to reveal itself in a social act. This social act, exchange, is not directly equivalent to needier se but is only the expression of need (and, so far as neo-classical economics is concerned, the only expression of need). For neo-classical economics individual need is not simply an active force, it is the active force whose expression is commodity exchange and the price system.
