be distinguished from the
production and distribution of goods, is the process by which prices are
made and an exchange of values is effected. Most values, i.e., my
present social status, my hopes of the future, and memory of the past,
are personal and not values that can be exchanged. The economic process
is concerned with values that can be treated as commodities.

All these processes may, and do, arise within most but not every society
or social group. Commerce presupposes the freedom of the individual to
pursue his own profit, and commerce can take place only to the extent
and degree that this freedom is permitted. Freedom of commerce is,
however, limited on the one hand by the mores and on the other by formal
law, so that the economic process takes place ordinarily within
limitations that are defined by the cultural and the political
processes. It is only where there is neither a cultural nor a political
order that commerce is absolutely free.

The areas of (1) the cultural, (2) the political, (3) the economic
processes and their relations to one another may be represented by
concentric circles.

In this representation the area of widest cultural influences is
coterminous with the area of commerce, because commerce in its widest
extension is invariably carried on under some restraints of custom and
customary law. Otherwise it is not commerce at all, but something
predacious outside the law. But if the area of the economic process is
almost invariably coterminous with the widest areas of cultural
influence, it does not extend to the smaller social groups. As a rule
trade does not invade the family. Family interests are always personal
even when they are carried on under the forms of commerce. Primitive
society, within the limits of the village, is usually communistic. All
values are personal, and the relations of individuals to one another,
economic or otherwise, are preordained by custom and law.

The impersonal values, values for exchange, seem to be in any given
society or social group in inverse relation to the personal values.

The attempt to describe in this large way the historical, cultural,
political, and economic processes, is justified in so far as it enables
us to recognize that the aspects of social life, which are the
subject-matter of the special social sciences, i.e., history, political
science, and economics, are involved in specific forms of change that
can be viewed abstractly, formulated, co