Feichtner, Isabel

English

<intR>²Dok

Constitutions of Value: Introduction tothe SymposiumIsabel Feichtner 2020-03-02T09:00:00The contributions to this symposium are the first fruits of the research project“Constitutions of Value.” They are based on presentations and discussions at aworkshop we convened at the University of Würzburg on 12 and 13 December2019 (with funds made available by the state of Bavaria for the research networkForDemocracy). We had invited lawyers, an economist, a sociologist, a historian,a philosopher, and a commons activist to think about the role of law (together withpolitics, economics, technology and science) in co-constituting value and valuepractices. In this introduction we seek to explain what prompted us to assemble thismultidisciplinary group to engage in and contribute to a legal study of value, what wehope to achieve with this project, and the challenges that it needs to face.Value discourses abound – but what should wemake of them?Value discourses are a ubiquitous but ambivalent part of the current moment. Tomention just a few examples familiar to readers of this blog: For years now authorson Verfassungsblog have been debating how to prevent, resist and sanction anerosion of the EU’s “fundamental values”. The far right organize themselves aroundand justify their politics with “a defense of values”. Since the financial crisis thediscipline of economics is evidencing a renewed engagement with “value” in whichdistinctions between the finance industry and the real economy, between “valueextraction” and “value creation” figure prominently. Repeatedly, ineffective climatepackages raise the question whether we must helplessly stand by whilst economicvalue production leads to the destruction of what we value as society.Looking more closely at these debates and deployments of the term value, a numberof questions arise: Is the term omnipresent but at the same time meaningless? Isit used to refer to anything a speaker wishes to denote as particularly important, oris it invoked when certain (economic) practices are perceived as unfair? Is thereany connection (if so, of what kind?) between political discourse invoking socialand constitutional “values” (plural) on the one hand and the renewed discourse on“value” (singular) as a terminus technicus in economics on the other? And, finally,might our call for scholarly engagement with value that is (also) driven by normativeambitions (we’ll get to those) not be a dangerous endeavor given the central placethis term takes in a politics we don’t want to be associated with?To answer the last question first: We do not think so. The research project isprompted by the intuition that attention to value and value practices will shed light onlinkages between the debate on dangers to fundamental EU values and the debate- 1 -on value in economics, linkages beyond the mere fact of a shared word. That aninquiry into value practices, into ways in which value is constituted and the languageof value is deployed, will be revealing of these links. We are convinced that a studyof value can bring us closer to answering questions of why politics appears unableto get a grip on climate change and how to reconcile our value practices (currentlycharacterized by exploitation and extraction leading to expulsion and extinction)with what we claim to value and wish to protect (such as our children, biodiversity,peace of mind, clean air and water, social cohesion). And lest the alarm bells startringing: As an outcome of this project, we do not envisage a list of material values,some objective theory of value, which if protected and implemented would provide afix to our current condition. Value, as we take it up here in this first symposium, is aproduct of social relations, an analytic, an argument and a mode of intervention. It isa project.Before we become more concrete with respect to our research agenda and inparticular its legal dimension, a brief note on why it is so difficult to pinpoint whatwe are talking about when we talk about value(s) in political economy. This is thecase, we propose, because even though value is central in everyday discourse,conceptualizations of liberal-capitalist political economies are characterized by anabsence of value. Neither in law and political theory nor in economics do notions ofvalue occupy a central place. Looking again to the EU fundamental values debate,value here rather figures as a placeholder for other concepts such as rule of law,democracy, human rights; and if we look to the discipline of economics, it is usuallyprice not value that is the conceptually significant term. If we can map how thisstate of affairs – the simultaneous omnipresence and absence of value – is beingsustained and justified, we may better discern how an inquiry into value can help tounderstand the making of society, the separation as well as connections betweendifferent societal spheres.The world-making effects of valueThe world- and society-making effects of value practices have prompted a growingbody of scholarship (see only here, here, here, here). Much of this literature owesa debt to Marx. While within the liberal conception of state and society there is anotable absence of a concept of value, from a Marxian perspective value is central:the State and the capitalist economy are part of one particular value system whichhas the production of surplus “exchange value” represented by money as its mainobjective. Individual liberty, freedom of contract, enforcement by the state are allnecessary elements, so that the worker can freely sell her labour as a commodityand for the price of its exchange value (i.e. the cost of its reproduction) to thecapitalist. The capitalist can then use this labour – the “use value” of labour being thesource of surplus value production appropriated by the capitalist. Value, in short, iswhat drives the economy and politics.If we follow others in turning to Marxian thought in order to justify a scholarly interestin value this is not to suggest that we need an objective value theory, either as a toolof critique or to guide endeavors to transform political economy. Rather, we turn toMarx as an author who, on the basis of value as an analytical concept, can help to- 2 -clarify the social and material – the world-making – effects of value practices andthe social relations underlying these practices. Marx not only provides insights intowhy an inquiry into value may be important to understand what structures our worlds.As pointed out by David Harvey (on the basis of footnote 89 in chapter 13 of volume1 of Capital), Marx also indicates a method for how to conduct such an inquirytoday. It is a method that looks at the interplay not only of economics and politics,but also education, science and technology in the constitution and coproduction ofsocial relations, relations that are constructed in historically particular ways and sobring about historically particular value practices and thus our historically particularsociety.In his attention to the constitutive and productive dynamics of technologically-intermediated social relations, Marx can also be read as a precursor to approachessuch as Science and Technology Studies (STS). As value is what gives ourlives meaning, it should not be surprising to choose value as an entry point toan inquiry into our modes of existence, an inquiry that is not prestructured by aconceptualization that regards economics, politics, science as separate terrains.No less importantly, Marxian thought places questions of distribution center stage:Who gains and who looses, who exploits and who/what is being exploited by currentvalue practices, how is value distributed within and across societies and how is thisdistribution being sustained and justified?No wonder then that many of the contributions to this symposium build on or takeinspiration from Marxian (and STS) thought.The constitutional study of valueIt remains for us to address the question: What law’s got to do with it? It is instudying the role of law in the co-constitution of value practices and institutions ofvalue production that our project can make a significant contribution to the study of(the society-making effects of) value. What we propose, thus, is a shift of focus awayfrom the usual suspects of legal scholarship. The usual suspects in the debatesmentioned at the outset of this post being the courts as well as regulators. Courts arecalled upon to defend and protect values (think e.g. of strategic climate and humanrights litigation); regulation is called for to curb value extraction and to “redefinevalue” in order to achieve a circular economy.From our elaborations above, it should be clear that this is not what we have inmind. We are not so much interested in corrections (through court intervention orregulation), but in understanding how law is co-constitutive in bringing about whatcourts and regulators then are called upon (often unsuccessfully) to correct. Inthis endeavor, our project joins forces with other lawyers and scholars from otherdisciplines who seek to clarify the central place of law in political economy (seehere and here). Lawyers and social scientists who follow the law to dismantle theblackboxes of institutions central to value production and value practices, in orderto reveal their legal make-up and design – institutions such as money, capital, thecorporation, global value chains. Further, the specific focus on the role of law invalue production and valuation processes distinguishes this project from projects that- 3 -focus more generally on the role of law in political economy. As indicated above, itbrings to the fore our politics and normative inclinations, as we are indeed driven bya quest for less destructive, perhaps even transformative value practices.Such scholarship may run the danger of overestimating the role not only of law, butalso of lawyers in shaping society. To correct for this danger, we count on our friendsin other disciplines, adding to the importance of the transdisciplinary character ofour project. In any case, what our project underlines is that the escalating callson democratic politics (and corporations for that matter) finally to do something toprotect what we value from destruction may not conjure up a “missing political will”.Or put differently: Calls for democratization need to take on existing value practices.In this post we have used the pronoun “we” a lot. We claim that a study of valuereveals that in addition to louder calls for democratic change, what is neededprospectively are exercises in imagining institutions, or hacking the ones we have, tobring value practices more into sync with what we value. We are painfully aware thatcurrent value practices introduce ever further divisions – between the North and theSouth, between capital and labour, between humans and other species – that theyproduce and sustain racism and sexism. A study of value brings these hierarchiesand exploitative relationships to the fore. If nonetheless we stick to the “we” it is inthe hope that different value practices are possible, practices that do not obscure therelational nature of value production and that are not based on exploitation but onsolidarity.- 4 -

Constitutions of Value: Introduction to the Symposium

https://intr2dok.vifa-recht.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/mir_derivate_00007968/Constitutions_of_Value_Introduction_to_the_Symposium.pdf

Constitutions of Value: Introduction to the Symposium

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

<intR>²Dok