ABSTRACT
Time seems almost identifiable with experience or even with being. Time has many faces, and it might seem reasonable to argue that there is no presumption that all of them must necessarily play a part together in any discussion of business or life at large. Time as measurable lapse is the one which has seemed most necessary to a theory of conduct, a theory of deliberative action. Some of the arbitrariness which value theory has allowed itself occurs in assumptions about the time-path by which prices, and quantities supplied and demanded, will move towards a market-clearing adjustment when a 'dis-equilibrium' situation has emerged. It is plain that in order to achieve a theory of value applicable to the real human situation, reason must compromise with time. Time bulks large in the notion of purposeful human accumulation. But accumulation is inherent in any mode of living other than the purest tool-less hand-to-mouth gathering of food.
