Value as Objectified Desire: Recognition, Labor, and Subjectivity in a Hegelian Reinterpretation of Political Economy

Abstract

Introduction: The theory of value has historically oscillated between two interpretive poles: classical objectivism, whose formulation culminates in the labor theory of value, and marginalist subjectivism, which situates its foundation in individual utility. However, both traditions share an anthropological limitation: they presuppose a subject whose ontological structure is not thematized.

Objective: This article proposes a reformulation of the problem of value based on the Hegelian category of desire and recognition. It argues that value cannot be reduced to either embodied labor or subjective preference, but must be understood as the institutionalized objectification of the desire for recognition within the framework of historically determined economic relations.

Method: Through a conceptual analysis that integrates Aristotle, Smith, Ricardo, and Marx with Hegel's ontology of recognition and contemporary developments in social theory, it is argued that the modern market can be interpreted as a dialectical arena where the struggle for recognition takes on a quantified form.

Results: Labor constitutes the material condition of production, utility expresses the individual dimension of valuation, but recognition articulates the intersubjective dimension that transforms both into social value.

Conclusion: The central thesis affirms that value is the historically configured economic form of recognition, and that its understanding requires overcoming the dichotomy between objective substance and subjective preference, integrating a relational ontology of desire into economic analysis.