One can accordingly say that the scarcity of goods in relation to the desires directed to them objectively conditions exchange, but that it is exchange alone that makes scarcity a factor in value. It is a mistake of many theories of value to assume that, when utility and scarcity are given, economic value—that is, the exchange process—is something to be taken for granted, a conceptually necessary consequence of those premises. In this they are by no means correct. If, for instance, those conditions are accompanied by ascetic resignation, or if they instigated only combat or robbery—which, to be sure, is indeed true often enough—no economic value and no economic life would emerge.

XREF: Challenges standard value theory assumptions; connects to sociological accounts of exchange and to alternative responses to scarcity like conflict or asceticism.

XREF: Connects to Simmel's broader sociology of forms and to the idea that economic value is a socially produced category rather than a natural one.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 261