Value or rent? A discussion of the research protocol from a political economic perspective

This paper discusses the research protocol adopted at the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value. The analytical power of the protocol’s concepts, influenced by Actor Network Theory, is weighed against Marxist theoretical contributions on value. The Centre’s focus on valuation processes is complemented by an investigation of the relation between valuation processes and the production of value. Theoretical considerations are interspersed with empirical ones relating to agricultural production and the valuation processes of land and water resources. The main argument is that valuation processes attached to the commodification of natural resources, such as land and water, are to be understood as ideological tools conferring an appearance of naturalness to capitalist conceptions of value. Because of that, the politics of the value relation are to be spelled out as a constitutive moment of the ideological function of the politics of property relations in capitalist society. From this derives that valuation processes are best understood in conjunction with the operations of the law of value, rather than as autonomous entities with a distinctive meaning; and that the labour theory of value is to be retained as the underlying theoretical principle which props up valuation processes. Under this light, valuation processes are understood beyond their material fixity in their uniquely ideological function. While they do not pertain directly to production and consumption, they mediate the extraction of rent – a deduction of value produced in the different sectors of the economy. On the basis of this theoretical anchoring, the paper concludes with a presentation of the research stream on African agriculture, value and valuation.