Capital redefined: a commonist value theory for liberating life

ABSTRACT

Concepts of capital have become increasingly vacuous. Attempts to appear au courant have led to conceptualisations that create more confusion than clarification. A critical question is how to redefine ‘capital’ to make it both consistent and concrete relevant to the challenges of the twenty-first century. Capital Redefined: A Commonist Value Theory for Liberating Life, authored by S.A.H. Hosseini and Barry Gills, seeks to address this challenge. Based on a careful reading, analysis of, and reflections on, their theory, it is argued that while to liberate life fully, subsequent works would need to develop evolutionary theories of the commons centred on land, the theory succeeds in developing a distinctive critique and redefinition of capital.

Capital in the twenty-first century

Calls to redefine capital are longstanding. About a decade ago, Thomas Piketty (2014) redefined it, highlighting the centrality of r > g (‘where r stands for the average annual rate of return on capital … and g stands for … the annual increase in income … ’, Piketty, 2014, p. 25), as a key feature of ‘capital in the twenty-first century’. Criticisms of this definition as merely mathematical or statistical were widespread. David Harvey (2014) called Piketty’s redefinition ‘naïve’ or ‘utopian’. Many others (e.g. Sheil, 2015) have also questioned Piketty’s redefinition of ‘capital’.

So, what is Capital in the twenty-first century? How can humanity live a meaningful life in an age of capitalism? Hosseini and Gills’ (2024) Capital Redefined: A Commonist Value Theory for Liberating Life provides fresh answers. Like Karl Marx’s (1867/1990) Capital, the book advances a redefinition based on a theory of value. But unlike Marx who set out an objective theory of capital based on value, Capital Redefined ‘involves the incorporation of a normative notion of value (value as “what ought to be valued” or “what is naturally valued”’ (p. 21)). This way of seeing is ‘commonist’ in the sense that what constitute the source of value is not only capital but also ‘a commonist state of living’, a commons outlook whether arising from commons as nature or nurture. To demonstrate this causality, the book goes beyond the Granger causality test, commonly used by economists but fundamentally questioned in the Journal of Philosophical Economics (Maziarz, 2015) and, instead, offers an Aristotelian four-pronged model of causality that emphasizes ‘the efficient, material, formal, and final causes’ (p. 17, italics in original) recast respectively as Creativity, Liveability, Conviviality, and Alterity and reused in interlocking ways.

The commons and commodities

At the core of the book is a critical exploration of the distinction between ‘true value’ and ‘fetish value’. The former emerges from an intricate web of commoning practices, encompassing the dynamic interplay of creativity, liveability, conviviality, and alterity, as opposed to fetish value, the latter, which is a product of the capitalistic system and represents a distorted manifestation of true value. The authors offer this distinction lucidly.

‘True value and fetish value do not belong to two essentially different universes, one being the world of ideals and the other being the world of the real. Fetish value is a perverted and distorted version of true value. The fact that true value is not fully “actualized” does not make it unrealistic and the fact that fetish value is “actualized” under capital does not make it a reflection of true “reality”’ (p. 21, italics in original). A Commonist view, therefore, seeks to fundamentally revalue capitalism to make visible the many contributions everyone and everything make to the good life.

This is not simply about challenging a commodity view of the world. Marx, for example, does so in his analysis of ‘use’ and ‘exchange’ value, but Marx built his political economy around exchange value. Hosseini and Gills, on the other hand, seek to advance political economy based on a ‘true value’, a commons value. Labour is still central to this redefinition of capital, but unlike Marxist labour theories of value, which prioritize waged labour and, in the best forms, claim that other types of labour create no value but rather distribute value, this work is a value theory of all forms of labour as the central driving force behind capitalism. In this respect, the commonist theory critically engages with feminist social reproduction theory and political ecology accounts by rejecting a flat ontology that simplistically equates diverse sources of value as being of the same nature. As the authors argue, ‘[t]he resulting theories become mere replicas of the capitalist reality … ’ (p. 122), with the practical use of only critiquing but not transforming capitalism.

This book is a primer for a new agenda. It does not provide empirical cases, but the framework for such emphasis. The book chastises critical theory for abandoning Marx (‘Rejectionists’), particularly his genius of defining capitalism based on a theory of value, and Marxists for neglecting the distinction between true and fetish value. The latter is the foundation of Marxist political economy (MPE), particularly quantitative Marxist political economists (advocates of the New Interpretation). While most Marxists contend that the core of MPE can continue to be stretched to cover the analysis of new social problems, the book under commentary strives to maintain the good in Marx without the problems. That makes the book nearly a theory of everything with a power to incorporate almost every critical theory.

Capital Redefined is largely consistent. Both in its preface and contents, a consistent argument is developed systematically. Chapter 1 sets the stage. Chapter 2 provides four specific critiques of Marxist approaches to the capitalist world system, while chapters 3 and 4 reconstruct these approaches. In chapter 5, a commonist theory of labour value is discussed as an alternative to the labour theory of value, which chapter 6 concludes and reflects on the implications of the commonist approach for various existing ways of challenging capital. The epilogue reinforces a consistent and coherent redefinition of capital.

Revolution or utopia?

Here is the case: ‘(true) “value” [is] the antithesis of capital’ (p. 125). Simple, no doubts, but never simplistic. Indeed, ‘This is the pivotal step in the process of defetishizing fetish value, which has become omnipresent; the definitive source of worldwide devastation, subjugation, and injustice, yet entrenched to reveal its fundamental anti-normative nature’ (p. 125, italics in original). For transformation more broadly, however, ‘[m]erely redefining the concept of value is insufficient’ (p. 125). Everyone is involved in one struggle or the other. But we cannot control the capitalist-driven train on which we are travelling.

The book transcends the binary narrative often found in discussions about capitalism, moving beyond the ‘Snowpiercer’ metaphor of simply choosing between negotiation with or capitulation from capitalism. It proposes a transformative approach to restructure existing economic and social systems. This is reflected in the authors’ observation that ‘even the most remarkable revolutions cannot guarantee salvation’ (p. 126), a recognition of the complexities involved in driving systemic change and the need for a more comprehensive and radical reimagining of societal systems. What requires emphasis is that ‘[t]rue value is the product of this perennial struggle, which manifests in social and ecological graces such as good health, a thriving society, and a fulfilling life’ (p. 127). Hosseini and Gills' aim ‘reclaim value from its grasp and forge a future that transcends the contradictions of capitalism by redefining the very essence of value, with the aim of creating new societies that nurture the flourishing and liberation of all’ (p. 127). This transcends apocalypse and utopia. It is revolutionary in its redefinition of capital.

Towards a commons centered evolutionary theory

Building a station for all train rides to the commons world is a complex art. The ‘journey’, like the one described by the Osibisa Afro Band in Wɔyaya, is ‘muddy and rough’. Sometimes the theory comes dangerously close to inconsistency. For instance, after questioning why waged labour is the source of all value, the authors claim ‘We can … incorporate them into our account of value without violating Marx’s emphasis on commodified labor power as the source of surplus value’ (p. 124).

The book itself is dense and detailed, but its specific engagement with theories of the commons – beyond a handful of references to Marxist and other critical or transformative writers (e.g. Dario Azzellini, Lorenzo Basso, Riccardo Bellofiore, and De Angelis)  – is relatively modest. This seems to have been a conscious choice because the authors compare their framework to social reproduction theory and general political ecology theorizing (see, for example, chapter 6), not to the various theories of the commons (for a recent review, see Agrawal et al., 2023). There are, to be sure, some few references to famous works in this genre like Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom (1990). But, as Yiming Wang (2023) argues, theorizing about the commons must go beyond big names and engage ‘common’ writers doing original work on the commons. As fundamentally still, whether propounded by big or small names, such theories tend to be contradictory, as stressed recently by Yan Zhang (2023) in the Journal of Economic Issues, but the book/theory under review glides on and skates over these irreconcilable differences as if they did not exist or assume they do not matter.

Advocating a ‘commonist view’ without clearly mapping or showing which school of the commons is being advanced and why or how the commonist view compares to specific theories/schools of the commons suggest that, at least, some aspects of the Hamed-Gills theory might be based on articles of faith. In reality, much theorizing of the commons is centred on capital. Its many contradictions are underpinned by the unresolved land question both for Indigenous and Exogenous peoples. As argued in books such as The Great Transformation (Polanyi, 1944/2001), Democracy versus Socialism (Hirsch, 1966), and Marx’s Theories of Land, Rent, and Cities (Munro, 2022), the time has come to change gears and go beyond capital.

Capital Redefined is about capital, so it probably must be capital-centred. The book is a reconstructive surgery of capital, including addressing and reworking the definitional problems in Thomas Piketty’s poesis. For this reason, too, the Commonist Value Theory must be the final word and mark the end of capital-centred theories of the commons. To liberate life itself, there is a need for new evolutionary theories of the commons centred on land.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Franklin Obeng-Odoom

Franklin Obeng-Odoom is a Doctor of Political Economy, a Docent in Urban and Economic Sociology, and, currently, Professor of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His books include The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty (University of Toronto Press, 2021).

Professor Obeng-Odoom is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, the oldest national learned society in postcolonial Africa, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a supranational assembly of the world’s leading social scientists.