Value as the Importance of Actions

Abstract

The theory of value presented in the next essay was developed in the 1980s (largely by anthropologists in the University of Chicago) and ‘90s (largely by myself) so it occurred to me, this being a new millennium and all, it might be helpful to the reader to provide something of an update. Something to demonstrate how this rather abstract theory can be useful for something. Since I am writing from America (just barely: I’m writing from New York, which is a little like America, but also a little like the world) shortly after the quite possibly legitimate reelection of George W. Bush, this seemed an obvious topic for reflection. How on earth could this have happened? All over the world, and certainly across the American left, people have been asking “what, exactly, were Bush voters thinking?” How could a demonstrable liar and idiot with the worst economic record of any American president since Herbert Hoover win the enthusiastic support of millions of Americans—and most excruciatingly, working class Americans, towards whose economic interests he is so openly hostile? Obviously, this very puzzlement is something of an explanation: many on the left clearly have no idea what most Americans are thinking. I would like to demonstrate that value theory, of the rather unconventional variety I’m proposing here, might actually be useful here. Therefore, I’ll start by setting out the problem in the starkest terms as possible. I will begin with an excursus on what I call the “political metaphysics of stupidity”, then pose a political-economic explanation. It is, I think, a pretty good one. Still, I hope to show that the very logic of the explanation illuminates the limits of any purely political economic approach and pushes towards something beyond it, the understanding that both economic and political struggles are, always, ultimately, struggles over the nature of value.