luc boltanski & arnaud esquerre

E N R I C H M E N T, P R O F I T,

CRITIQUE

A Rejoinder to Nancy Fraser

N
ancy fraser raises several questions about what we pro-
pose to call an economy of enrichment. They concern, first, our
conception of capitalism and, in particular, the relationship
between our ‘forms of valorization’ and Marx’s ‘trinity for-
mula’ of profit, interest and rent; second, the links that bind the different
economic sectors of the world-capitalist system together—in particular,
the enrichment economy and the financial economy, Fraser’s ‘candidate
for contemporary capitalism’s dominant sector’; third, the historical
birth of the economy of enrichment; fourth, a measure that would deter-
mine its importance—which, according to Fraser, we overestimate; and
fifth, what follows from our account for the task of critique.

Fraser’s questions are very important, and unfortunately we can only par-
tially address them here. A more complete analysis can be found in our
book Enrichissement: Une critique de la marchandise, published in France
earlier this year, and it is on this analysis that we will draw in our response
to Fraser. In what follows, we will first differentiate and explicate those
forms of capitalism which are, more precisely, forms of valorization—our
analysis has expanded from three to four such forms. We will then give
a brief historical overview of the economy of enrichment and explain the
relationship between profit and surplus-value in this kind of economy.
Third, while we cannot measure the enrichment economy, as we lack the
statistical tools to do so, we will nonetheless offer an example, namely
tourism, that suggests its relative importance, and illustrates the dis-
placements that produce profit and structure the relationship between

new left review 106 july aug 2017 67

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forms of valorization. Fourth, concerning the articulation of the differ-

ent sectors, we will propose the concept of integral capitalism. Finally,
in order to indicate one of the potential lines of development of a new
critique of capitalism based on our analysis, we will draw attention to the
problematic of what we call forbidden surplus-value.

1. The transformation set of the forms of valorization

In our society, social actors, whether they are buying or selling, are con-
stantly immersed in the world of commodities, upon which, more often
than they would like to admit, their experience of what they conceive as
reality largely depends. The process of exchange would be indetermina-
ble if people did not have frameworks that enabled their judgements to
converge, or at least move closer together, as they confront what might
be called commercial tests. It is these frameworks that tend to inform their
reasons for acting and that we will refer to as commodity structures. Such
structures are at once identifiable in their environment and integrated
into other cognitive resources available to those actors as they orient
themselves in reality. This is why, in order to describe the operational
foundations of these structures, we will speak of forms of valorization.

These forms of valorization make it possible to link objects to the per-

spectives from which they must be viewed in order to be properly valued.
They have an effect on the organization of commodities only insofar
as they influence the composition of the discourse on objects consid-
ered as commodities—that is to say, in association with a price. It is
precisely, however, because they affect, not the things themselves, but
the discourses surrounding them that they are structured—as is every
argumentative procedure based on the use of language. It is in this way
that they, in turn, help guide the structuring of the commodity.

In the case of commodities that give rise to frequent transactions in

our societies, we have identified four forms of valorization whose
relationships can be articulated as a set of transformations, in Claude
Lévi-Strauss’s sense of the term. An advantage of this type of model,
as Lévi-Strauss showed, is that it can be translated into mathematical
language. The four forms of valorization share a way of understanding
things that has two principal aspects. The first aspect concerns the way
in which an object that gives rise to a transaction can be so described as
to highlight those differences which, given a certain price, can give it
an advantage over other things that might be liable to substitute for it.
 boltanski & esquerre: Reply to Fraser 69

Along this axis, one can make a distinction between things that differ a
lot and things that differ little. The second aspect concerns estimates of
the ways in which this object’s price might evolve over time—that is to
say, what one might call its market potential. The opposition between
short-term and long-term can be drawn along this axis. Each of these
aspects can, in turn, be subdivided according to two distinct modalities.
The differences can be valorized by presenting them in the form of a
limited number of characteristics, possibly with reference to numeri-
cal data, according to a modality resembling codification. In this case,
one would speak of an analytical presentation. Or, conversely, differ-
ences can be valorized by linking a story to the object at the centre of the
transaction. We would then speak of a narrative presentation. If we now
consider estimates of the object’s market potential, we see that it, too,
can be distributed between two modalities. Such estimates may reckon
that the object’s price has a high chance of falling over time, as is the
case for most industrially produced objects, whose prices are at their
peak when they are new and inevitably drop when they are exchanged on
the second-hand market. Or they may, on the contrary, calculate that the
sale price of the object has every chance of increasing over time.

By combining these possibilities, we get four forms of valorization—

not just three, as we initially assumed.1 We will call the first one the
standard form, set by the development of industrial mass production.
The standard form favours an analytical presentation of objects whose
price diminishes as they go from new to used, before becoming—their
inescapable destiny—mere waste. A second form holds sway in the now-
booming sectors of luxury goods, heritage, arts and culture—activities
that we will group, along with tourism, under the rubric of an ‘economy
of enrichment’. In this case, the valorization of an object will be based
on a story—usually rooted in the past—and hold out the prospect that
the price of the object enriched by this narrative stands a good chance
of increasing over time. We will call this the collection form, to stress
the fact that it generalizes a form of appreciation initially shaped by the
practices of collectors.

The two other forms have different ways of combining mode of pres-
entation and market potential. Like the collection form, the trend
form—which prevails, for example, in the fashion world—values things

1
Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, ‘The Economic Life of Things’, nlr 98,
March–April 2016.
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by connecting them to a narrative, but one that is based on contempo-

rary figures like celebrities, rather than people of the past. Unlike objects
of collection, however, things that are valorized by reference to fashion
have very limited market potential. Their price is destined to fall rather
quickly, making this a field of obsolescence par excellence. A final form of
valorization completes the set. This is what we have called the asset form.
Transactions take this form when the exchange is mainly motivated by
the possibility of re-selling the object for a profit at some point in the
(more or less distant) future. In this case, the intrinsic properties of the
object—let us say, a work of art that could be auctioned—are effaced by
its financial determinants, for example its liquidity or otherwise, as calcu-
lated in an analytical presentation. Based on these forms of valorization,
specific arenas of transaction develop in which the prices of things can
be justified or criticized according to a range of different arguments.

2. Dynamics of capitalism, profits and surplus value

The forms of valorization, whose structure we have just outlined, sup-

ply social actors with reference points for engaging in exchange and
judging prices. However, we should not consider the structures of the
commodity as unchanging components of reality. They have a histori-
cal dimension: the changes that affect the structures of the commodity
are fundamentally dependent on the dynamics of capitalism. With the
development of capitalism in modern Europe, trade in the most diverse
objects progressively tended towards homogeneity, as everything
became liable to be transmuted into a commodity and exchanged—in
expectation of profit—for monetary denominations, themselves more
or less standardized; a process that Marx was one of the first to bring
to light. But this process of homogenization went hand-in-hand with a
differentiation of objects according to the likelihood that trading in them
would generate a profit.

We have tended to describe this sort of society, particularly since the

1960s and 70s, as a consumer society—a designation that usually has
critical connotations—and to emphasize the fact that people, when
confronted with a multitude of diverse objects, can buy them, and in
quantities limited only by the monetary resources at their disposal.
However, we wish to point out that such a society is increasingly also a
market society in the sense that actors are supposed to know how to nego-
tiate commercially and are encouraged to become sellers themselves,
as is the case, for example, when they capitalize on property assets by
 boltanski & esquerre: Reply to Fraser 71

renting them out for short periods, or when they buy and sell used or
collectable objects over the internet.

Value is connected to profit. If one accepts that the reference to value is

particularly necessary in relation to exchange and when it is a matter of
either criticizing the price of a thing or justifying it in response to criti-
cism, one can see that criticism and justification are mainly concerned
with determining the margin; that is to say, the relation between a price
and other possible prices (metaprices)—a margin that will be favourable
either to the buyer, if it is small, or to the seller, if it is large. The specific-
ity of capitalism is that it generates competition between different profit
centres, each of which intends to sell—at an optimal price in order to
make a maximum profit—the goods in its possession, which it obtained
at a certain cost, whether it made or bought them. It will be easily under-
stood, therefore, that the procedures for defending the value of goods
offered for sale play an important role in such a framework.

Explanations of profit have been many, its sources traced to entrepre-

neurial innovation (Schumpeter), monopoly effects limiting competition
(Chamberlin), action in situations of uncertainty (Knight), or access to
power positions from which competition can be paralyzed (Veblen).
Among the range of interpretations of profit, two analyses particularly
stand out, the first of which stresses value, the second prices. Both seek
to understand how the exchange of commodities can generate a profit
recorded in accounting terms on the balance sheet of a profit centre,
that is to say objectified by the margin—which can be positive, negative
or neutral—separating the monetary equivalent of that commodity as
between two balance sheets.

The first explanation, developed by Marx, focused on the human labour

that must be spent in order for a commodity to acquire a form in which
it can be exchanged. It emphasizes the possibility of a surplus-value gen-
erated by exploiting unpaid labour (surplus labour): of, in other words,
surplus-value labour. The second explanation concentrates on the exchange
operation itself. It stresses the difference between the price for which a
commodity was bought and the price at which it is sold. However, if this
difference is not to be neutralized in the course of successive exchanges
between independent entities, one must assume that the time and place
of the first exchange—when the commodity is bought—does not interact
directly with the time and place of the second exchange—during which
the thing is sold. In other words, the commodity must be subject to a
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displacement. Braudel saw this displacement as essentially geographic

(long-distance commerce), but we will try to show that the term can be
extended to include other forms of displacement that also have the effect
of increasing the price of the displaced commodity.

3. Displacement of commodities, buyers and valorization forms

According to Braudel, the maximization of commercial surplus-value

depended on the displacement of commodities. Let us first look at the
example of geographical displacements. These are obvious in the case of
luxury products associated with a label known to come from a particular
nation or region and exported to more or less distant lands where buy-
ers acquire them for the prestige of the country of origin. In such cases,
profits can be all the higher for a combination of surplus-value derived
from labour and surplus-value derived from commerce.

Profits from tourism, a central activity in the economy of enrichment,

also derive from geographic displacement. In this case, however, since
the price of things—or the price of access to them, which is more less
the same—depends on their embeddedness in a site, it is the buyers’
displacement from that site which generates a profit by causing them to
spend money on upkeep, leisure or luxury at a level equal to or higher
than the expenditure they would have incurred in their home country.
Fraser presents New York as the ‘citadel of finance’. But finance does
not explain the High Line neighbourhood, where heritage buildings
and spaces cluster alongside luxury boutiques, world-famous galleries
and museums (and crowds of tourists): all elements characteristic of the
economy of enrichment now at the heart of the city.

Geographical displacements are far from being the only sort. In many
cases, the ways in which objects circulate over the course of their ‘eco-
nomic life’, giving rise to different forms of valorization, can be viewed
as so many displacements. This is the case, for example, when the value
of something initially produced and exchanged as a standard object is
revalorized by reference to the collection form. Or when, in the course
of its circulation, an object initially valorized according to the trend form
either moves towards the standard form or, conversely, is reassessed
with reference to the collection form. As for objects valorized according
to the asset form, these could have been initially assessed by reference to
the three other forms, such as when a car—the quintessential standard
 boltanski & esquerre: Reply to Fraser 73

product—becomes the possession of a celebrity (trend form), before

becoming a collectable object, likely to be acquired either as an invest-
ment or in order to be quickly resold at a profit.

Almost any displacement is possible between the different forms of

valorization—though reversion to the standard form can only occur if
the object becomes a prototype—a slim possibility in the case of the col-
lection form, in which the prohibition against reproduction generally
prevents a collection object from becoming a standard object. Yet this
possibility exists nonetheless, as when museums market ‘derivative’
products—so-called ‘identical’ reproductions of exhibited masterpieces.
On the other hand, the trend form, with its cyclical character, more com-
monly sends outmoded objects back to the standard form. A designer
might then make a slight change to these, enabling them to serve as
prototypes for a new generation of specimens. Moreover, in marketing
the same product, a profit can be made both by greatly marking up sin-
gle units (as in the collection form) and by selling a large number of
samples (as in the standard from), taking advantage of widely differing
points of sale.

4. Integral capitalism

Most analyses of how capitalism has changed since the 1970s have
focused on transformations of organization and production, on the
internationalization of finance that Nancy Fraser emphasizes, or on the
growth in public, corporate and household debt (and the shortfall of fis-
cal revenues to cover state expenditure). There has been less emphasis
on changes that have affected the cosmos of the commodity and the
commerce of objects, which remain a central source of profit and so of
the accumulation of capital.

Concomitant with the displacement of mass industry to peripheral

countries, where the majority of the population is poor, has been the
development of an enrichment economy in former industrial countries
where the wealthy remain more numerous than anywhere else, exploit-
ing to the uttermost the possibilities that the commerce of objects offers
for generating the profits on which capitalism feeds. This is achieved by
valorizing side-effects or leftovers in the collection form (recuperating
waste); by accelerating obsolescence with an intensification of the trend
form, which conversely discards things that have hardly been used; and
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by attenuating the difference between material objects and their mon-

etary equivalent, in a circulation of things treated almost as if they were
financial products, as enabled by the asset form. To mark the specificity
of the form of capitalism that takes advantage of all four forms of valori-
zation, we will speak of integral capitalism.

An integral capitalism does not escape the characterization of capital-

ism that stresses its requirement for accumulation without limit. But
this form pursues accumulation by expanding the universe of com-
modities, exploiting new lodes of wealth and interconnecting different
ways of valorizing things, whilst putting them into circulation for maxi-
mum profit. It is this regime that, together with the development of the
financial and digital economies, favours the growth of an enrichment
economy. That growth is connected with another process of global con-
sequence since the 1990s: the expansion of mass production, and of the
capitalism associated with Europe’s industrial revolution, to parts of the
world that had hitherto remained predominantly agrarian. The �����������
enrich-
ment economy could be thought largely dependent on this expansion
and the profits it generates via circuits of finance, including in those
countries that are becoming deindustrialized. Furthermore, in countries
where the enrichment economy is very conspicuous, the sale of standard
objects—entirely or partially manufactured in the countries to which
mass production has been moved—continues to play an important, even
leading, economic role.

The specificity of the enrichment economy, however, lies in profits

derived from a commerce of objects that, even when they are manufac-
tured industrially, give rise to a valorization based primarily on the three
other forms. It is associated with particular ways of exploiting a highly
qualified local workforce entrusted with the tasks of such valorization.
In this sense, the profits it generates depend in part on the extraction
of surplus-value labour. Nevertheless, what makes this type of economy
distinct is above all its reliance on systems that enable it to extract much
larger commercial profits than can currently be made from standard
objects, which face a higher level of competition. Finally, it should be
noted that whereas a mass economy relies principally on exploitation
of the poor, whether as workers or consumers, an enrichment economy
derives its profits essentially from the wealthy. As Braudel’s analyses
have shown, it is primarily trade in ‘rare’ or luxury goods destined for
the wealthy that generates especially large commercial surplus-value.
 boltanski & esquerre: Reply to Fraser 75

As these remarks suggest, integral capitalism is not the expression of

a ‘postmodern’ capitalism that would no longer rely on profits derived
from surplus-value labour, or even on the production and circulation of
material objects. But it is a form of capitalism whose flexibility enables
it to take advantage of a much wider range of things than in the past,
whose diversity is not only preserved but valorized, to exploit the dif-
ferences it establishes between the status of varying commodities. At
the same time, it integrates these into a single forcefield, within which
financial flows—that, being strictly commensurable, are indifferent to
the specificities of the objects that feed them—create a form of interde-
pendence, even a kind of solidarity.

However, against this backdrop of tacit solidarity, there exist conflicts

over the appropriation of profits, which depend on the way differences
between things are exploited in the various forms we have highlighted.
These struggles relate back to the question of who has control over the
determination of these differences and their valorization: in other words,
to the question of power—which, in the context of capitalism, is meas-
ured by the ability of agents to valorize certain differences, and thereby
devalue differences from which their rivals hope to profit.

5. Forbidden surplus-value

At every moment of its history, capitalism has operated at the boundaries

of the commodifiable and the non-commodifiable, boundaries drawn by
social and moral norms and often inscribed in law. This is no doubt
the reason why the struggle against commodification has always been
a central feature of the critique of capitalism. That struggle has often
acquired a moral inflection, or more precisely, a humanist emphasis
based on a distinction between human beings, removed from the uni-
verse of commodities, and things, destined for commodification, such
that those nonhuman beings or objects it was felt should be shielded
from commodification—domestic animals or works of art—could only
be protected by categorizing them as quasi-persons. In other cases, it
was the separation between civil society, the domain par excellence of
commerce, and the state that helped to maintain a boundary between
the commodifiable and the non-commodifiable.

Yet wherever the line was drawn, commerce in things located closest
to the limits of the commodifiable has always benefited from a kind of
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surplus-value, as if the fact that they have in some sense been wrenched
from the non-market sphere increases their price. This is the surplus-
value realized by those who engage in the illegal trade of things that
cannot be traded, and which could be called forbidden surplus-value.
Those who profit most from the development of the enrichment econ-
omy have an interest in maintaining the separation between ordinary
things, whose trade is supposed to obey only economic laws, and excep-
tional things, which, although they are traded, are presented as if they
somehow essentially elude the universe of commodities, conferring an
extra value on them and supporting their price.

Insofar as the dynamics of capitalism are based on displacements

entailing an expansion of commodification, they tend not only to stand-
ardize the world we experience, as is often charged (the expansion of the
industrial economy being held responsible for the loss of local particu-
larities in a global unification). At the same time, they also rest on the
exploitation of differences—and on the condition that these are distrib-
uted asymmetrically. With the development of the enrichment economy,
capitalism takes the utmost possible advantage of the different forms of
valorization, increasing the commodification of new objects while extract-
ing maximum profit from them, either by causing the prices of certain
things to fall (the standard and trend forms), or by raising the prices of
other things when they are put back in circulation (the collection and
asset forms). Yet though commodification has expanded, resorting to all
four forms of valorization, it is far from exhausting all that makes up the
world, much of which remains as yet uncommodified.

Translated by Matthew Cunningham