What is `Value’? Unpacking an overlooked key concept

Abstract

The paper addresses remarkable lacunae surrounding the term value. It has four objectives. The first is to specify and elucidate three regimes of representation – ‘business value,’ ‘surplus value’ and ‘sign value’ – that are directly relevant for analysing and critiquing contemporary capitalist work organizations. A second is to advance analyses of value that resist a restriction of its meaning to a single, ostensibly authoritative articulation. A third objective is to commend and illustrate a distinctive, postfoundationalist perspective on value which proceeds from a suspension of the idea that there is an essence of value that awaits capture by a sufficiently powerful theoretical position. The final objective of the paper is to indicate how ‘sign value’ may be incorporated into a reconstructed critique of political economy that bears directly upon the contemporary, financialized phase of capitalist development.