Prices, values, and good: toward a synthesis of economic and normative theory

As Hosseini and Gills argue, value must be re-examined and liberated from its subservient ties to the logic of markets, price fluctuations, and the circuit of capital. The question is, what is the right way to open up debate on value and what should be valued? Here I focus on revising the Marxian analysis of value and price relations. I develop the concept of commodity in terms of social theories developed a good century after Marx, utilizing the scheme of circuit of capital though in a manner that avoids the infamous transformation problem. The point is to open up possibilities for a realist, qualitative, and causal analysis of the processes of production and exchange. By unifying production, valuation, and consumption within an overall conceptual model, new questions emerge, and they have to do with value in a more general sense, including the value of nature, rights, and justice.