The alt and aff are distinct in theorizations of economics and the function of value assigned to a human

Equalizing qualitatively different kinds of labor in markets is less an outcome of exact measurement and more one of transforming activities that were formerly beyond comparison. Their comparison and exact equalization only makes sense in a setting where the parties involved are seeking to maximize their gains out of a transaction under competitive terms (Heilbroner, 1983). Value is then not some intrinsic quality that objects of human labor possess. Instead, value is a characteristic bestowed on things by a social order influencing people’s behavior. In capitalism, people are rationalized into becoming “economic beings” (Heilbroner, 1983: 276). As such, they pursue the maximization of their self-interest having their livelihoods pitted against each other (De Angelis, 2007). From the Marxian perspective, (capitalist) value is a category that reveals “a set of antagonistic social relations and systemic structures that compel individuals to act in certain ways” (Pitts, 2020: 1). A central tool facilitating the transformation of concrete to abstract labor has been the development of scientific bookkeeping. Historically born in the commercial centers of the Italian city states in the 14th century (Yamey, 1949) it is most famously associated with Pacioli’s work in Venice in 1494 (Pacioli, 1994/1494). Sombart (1987/1916) examines the birth and development of capitalism focusing on a shift from a needs-based economy to one primarily satisfying acquisition. In this process, Sombart identifies the role of double-entry bookkeeping as key in instilling traditional artisans and craftspeople with the capitalist spirit and rendering objective the idea of wealth (Most, 1976). Double-entry objects represent a complex system of needs and motivations in simple calculations, thereby fostering a general economization, and thus fundamental change of social life (Drechsler, 2000). Double-entry bookkeeping is at the heart of capitalist value by crystalizing capitalist mechanics and ethics. Capitalism has procured in double-entry bookkeeping a tool which activates its forces, while this tool proliferated capitalism out of capitalism’s own spirit (Eddie and Murphy, 1984). Double-entry follows a logic of acquisition and exchange which allowed an underlying economic order to expand, rendering land, things, actions, people, and their relations into the new objects of acquisition and exchange. Eventually, economics emerged as a discipline “pure” from moral and value judgment, and by doing so tacitly ascribed moral superiority to commercial success itself (Weber, 2013). Generations of economists have been trained in deprivation of analytical tools to examine value separate from the dynamics of prices (Mazzucato, 2018) – a type of “schooling” that has been exactly the outcome of the dominant perception of value (Pitts, 2020). Political questions of value and justice are examined as mere calculable implications of prices, wages, or profits. The task of theory of value is further from finding practical standards for equalizing commodities. It is the theoretical understanding and explanation of this equalization process, along with its causal relations and practical implications (Rubin, 1973). The process of commodities being equalized in markets is closely connected to the way labor, and other factors of production, are acquired and exchanged. Likewise, it is connected to the enclosure of the commons, the grabbing of livelihoods outside the market order, and the collapse of ecosystems. The abandonment of inquiries on value from the classical political economy to the neoclassical theory is not indicative of a purported irrelevance of value but a direct outcome of how value is conceived and established in capitalism. The function of value as a means of imparting the capitalist principles and structures to economic life remains a persisting feature. In order to address the devastating impact of capitalism on people and ecosystems we need a perception of value that conveys different orderly configurations.