Value in Ethics and Economics and Economics

In this rich and insightful book Elizabeth Anderson develops an original account of value and rational action and then employs this account to address the pragmatic political question of what the proper range of the market should be. Anderson’s principal targets are consequentialism, monism and the crude ‘economic’ reasoning which underpins much contemporary social policy. In Value in Ethics and Economics Anderson endorses the Kantian thought that everything has either a price or a dignity, expanding it to include a wide array of rightful forms of regard including ‘use’, ‘respect’, ‘appreciation’, ‘consideration’ and ‘love’ (p. 10). In so doing she provides compelling arguments for restricting the market to only those goods whose expressive meaning is properly realised when treated instrumentally. Determining which goods should be commodified is for Anderson a matter of determining the mode of treatment appropriate to the good in question. In stark contrast to the neo-classical economist, Anderson argues that social policy should not be oriented simply towards maximising outcomes, but rather, should involve analysis of the meaning of the goods which are being dealt with; that is, she advocates a shift from calculation to cultural interpretation.