Valore, merce, natura. Fallacia ontologica e dialettica del concreto e dell’astratto: il caso di Georgescu-Roegen, Luc Boltanski, e altri.

In this article, we discuss value and theories of value. We criticize two views of value generated in capitalist society: the objectivist and the subjectivist. These two theories of value function as large theoretical umbrellas under which various objectivist and subjectivist views lurk. Here we are interested in confronting two views that we can call "physicalist" and "justificationist," On the one hand, a hyper-objectivist view of value that implies the idea that nature can create value because it is capable of capturing low entropy; on the other hand, a purely subjective and conventional conception of value, a value that has its genesis in the exchange of goods in the marketplace and functions as a justification for the price that individuals are willing to pay on the basis of subjective preferences. Both of these approaches deny that value is a social relationship between people and ultimately that it is human labor that provides the foundational objectivity of value. We argue that these are two positions that ultimately come together in a trans-historical conception of value as an abstraction of labour and metabolic exchange.