Existence values are meanings that are ordered among themselves according to preferences, in which the material or utilitarian aspect dominates over social and abstract ones. For example, social status is an existence value insofar as it depends on material wealth, and not on the qualities of a person. The luxurious meal of a medieval monarch was no different from a piece of stale bread in the hands of his last subject, since it served the same purpose—the prolongation of his material, social and psychological existence. In his material existence, man is moved by the consequences of his actions, that is, by effect or utility. The animal principle in man speaks the language of efficiency.
Communication values are meanings ordered among themselves according to preferences, in which the social aspect dominates the material and abstract—for example, friendship or justice. In his social relationships, man is guided by norms, or δέοντα. The sum of the norms is a socio-cultural order. The social principle in man speaks the language of justice.
Self-expression values are meanings ordered by preferences, in which the abstract aspect dominates over the social and material—for example, dreams, fears, hopes and other creative values. In his personal development, man is guided by virtues and ideals. The cultural principle in man speaks the language of freedom.
Human action is the result not only of individual but also of social choice. A person not only pursues benefits, but also follows his duty and strives for virtues:
“To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value. It is the same with the desire to live in affluence. The very existence of ascetics and of men who renounce material gains for the sake of clinging to their convictions and of preserving their dignity and self-respect is evidence that the striving after more tangible amenities is not inevitable but rather the result of a choice” (Mises 1996, p. 20).
A situation in which a person must choose between utility and morality, between morality and ideal, between ideal and utility, is a situation of existential choice, a choice between conflicting groups of values. People do not maximize utility—they make individual and social choice, and in making choice they create meaning.
Illustration 3. Structure of values
It is difficult to say where cultural selection ends and social choice begins. In many cases it can be the same thing. Social choice is determined not only by the coordination of individual choices, which is often impossible in the absence of a “dictator,” but also by the presence of impersonal norms and ideals. Society is impossible without morality and sublime feelings; it is equally the result of the actions of materialists, utilitarians and pragmatists, as well as idealists, moralists and romantics. People are not reduced to identifying preferences and maximizing utility, they are not “economic” but “socio-cultural” people. Their actions are based not only on calculation, but also on mutual likes and dislikes, on duty and obligations arising from reciprocity. “Morality stems from our sentiments, not our reason” (Collier 2018, p. 35). Human actions cannot be reduced to consumption, human values cannot be reduced to utility.
If utility is an individually necessary set of existence values, then use value is a socially necessary set of these values. Utility arises from the needs and desires of individuals, use value from socio-cultural norms:
“René Girard’s hypothesis is crucial for understanding the nature of human institutions and the logic of their functioning. According to this hypothesis, institutions arise from the violence of human desire and their normalizing effect on it arises from their external relationship to the clash of conflicting desires” (Aglietta and Orléan 2002, p. 15).
Utility and use value are two complementary processes: utility is the process of individual calculation that creates culture-society, and use value is the process of social choice that creates the active power of the individual.
“…An order arising from the separate decisions of many individuals on the basis of different information cannot be determined by a common scale of the relative importance of different ends. … Order is desirable not for keeping everything in place but for generating new powers that would otherwise not exist” (Hayek 1988-2022, vol. 1, p. 79).
Use value is not a sum of occasional utilities; it is the socially necessary set of existence values. The history of production and exchange has consisted of the normalization or averaging of utilities, their transformation into socially necessary use values. In order for grain, cattle, precious metals, etc. to be transformed into use values, they had to become abstractions of utility. The end point of this process of social abstraction is commodities, exchange values, and money.
Use value, exchange value and money
In Marx’s analysis of commodity production, commodities resulting from productive activities are opposed to immediate producers. Commodities, or dead labor, dominate living labor, or the workers themselves. To analyze human history in a broader perspective than commodity production, a generalization of concepts is necessary. We generalize the concept of labor to the concept of activity (action), the concept of commodity to the result of an activity (result of an action), thus eliminating the opposition between labor and commodity and uniting them in the concept of meaning.
Marx also distinguished between the activity that creates use values, or concrete labor, and the activity that creates exchange values, or abstract labor, in which the characteristics of specific types of labor disappear:
“If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labor. But even the product of labor itself has undergone a change in our hands. If we make abstraction from its use value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn, or any other useful thing. Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labor of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labor. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labor embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labor; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labor, human labor in the abstract” (Marx and Engels 1975-2004, vol. 35, p. 48).
By abstracting from specific kinds of labor, we do not create a new kind of labor. Abstract labor and its products do not exist in themselves; they are found in concrete labor processes and their products. But if concrete labor creates use values and commodities, then abstract labor creates exchange values and money. As we have shown, use value is not an individual utility but a socially necessary set of existence values. Use value is, so to speak, a prologue to a commodity in demand on the market and its exchange value. For a commodity to have an exchange value it should have a use value, that is, satisfy socially necessary needs. Commodities are wealth because they accumulate both use and exchange values.
We will distinguish between the multiplicity and the mass of meanings. The multiplicity of meanings consists of a set of meanings. In terms of commodities, these could be: two rolls of cloth, three bulls, ten tons of steel, etc. The mass of meanings is the set of cultural bits contained in a given multiplicity of meanings. Concrete labor creates commodities, abstract labor defines their mass. As Marx said, the abstract labor that forms the substance of value is homogeneous labor. However, since at the time of Marx there was neither information theory nor the concept of the bit, he had to measure abstract labor in terms of labor time:
“A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labor in the abstract has been embodied or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labor, contained in the article. The quantity of labor, however, is measured by its duration, and labor time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours” (Marx and Engels 1975-2004, vol. 35, pp. 48-49).
Marx measured the exchange value of a product by the amount of