The social determination of monetary value: A response to Ecks

Abstract

Ecks is disappointed that Inventing Value (2022) does not develop a comprehensive, essentially ethical, theory of the value of things based in the materiality of human need. But this is not the objective of the book. Instead, the book seeks to examine how value, as we assess it in specifically monetary terms, functions in the economy. Assessments of value in both the commodity and asset sectors are the focus of enormous social contestation backed by considerable social power, and the book focuses on how this shapes our valuations.