"This book begins the task of reconstructing the theory of value. Value is central to the commodity and asset sectors of the contemporary economy: nothing can be bought or sold, whether goods, services or assets, without beliefs about what it is worth. Given the enormous influence of market economies in our social world, value thus plays a key role in determining events and outcomes in contemporary society. Yet the best-established theories of value are radically inadequate to the task of explaining the role that value plays. On the one hand, mainstream economics sees value as the equilibrium price produced by the forces of demand and supply, but most prices are not in equilibrium and this model ignores many of the most important forces that influence them. This is much more than just an explanatory problem, since the model of equilibrating markets is central to the legitimation of the current economic system: without it the economic emperor has no clothes."--