Engaging Raj Patel's "The Value of Nothing"

I have not read Raj Patel's latest book yet, except for parts of its first chapter. Just read John Gray's review. I thought Gray raises an important question which remains an issue for materialist ideologies/movements fighting against materialism/capitalism. I touched upon this in a previous post, here. Yet, based on my previous reading and listening to Raj's work, I have a feeling that Gray might have under-appreciated Raj's call for a substantial change in how we value things and live our life; Gray may have read Raj through the lens of socialist/labor-rights/progressive movements that Raj is closed to in his activism, instead of reading the book on its own merit. But I can be wrong too.

On a side note, do check out a promotional video of the book that Raj has published online.

Excerpts:

Review: The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
By John Gray, The Observer, December 13, 2009
Source

"Part of the problem is the belief that price and value are for most purposes one and the same. This equation makes it possible for them to develop impressive-looking mathematical models of the economy, but it involves a huge oversimplification of reality. As Raj Patel explains in this penetrating and admirably concise guide to the follies of market fundamentalism, the notion that the value of a good is its price obscures the complexity of markets and of human beings. Theories of efficient markets take the shifting abstractions generated by the price mechanism as actually existing entities but, as Patel puts it, using one of many vivid metaphors that stud his argument, this is like being in the simulated world of The Matrix, surrounded by "a digital rain of symbols and signs".

The seeming precision of the computer screen suggests that something substantial is being measured and exchanged, when in fact what is being traded are virtual assets whose relations with actual resources are tangled and hidden..."
...

"Contrary to the claims of economists, the belief that price equals value is not science, an accurate representation of the world, but ideology – a way of obfuscating the world."
...

"Much of what passes as economics is ideology and ideology only works if those who produce it also believe in it. The difficulty of the present situation comes from the fact that while few any longer believe in the free market, no one has an alternative to it that is able to command widespread support. Predictably, the financial storm has jolted moribund Marxist theories back into a semblance of life..."
...

"A passionate activist, he believes problems of resource scarcity are man-made and can always be solved by fairer distribution. However, the growth-oriented lifestyle of rich countries is not unsustainable because it is unjust; it is unsustainable because the Earth's resources are unalterably finite. It may be true that the imbalance between human demands and the environment could be diminished if enough people rejected material affluence as their main goal in life. But this is an extremely nebulous possibility and one that highlights the deepest difficulty for Patel's analysis.

Oscar Wilde may have been right that people know the price of everything and the value of nothing, a remark Patel cites at the start of his book, and which gives him its title. But what is value if it is not price? It is telling that when trying to flesh out a non-market account, Patel turns to religion, in this case Buddhism. The Buddhist tradition gives him what he needs – an understanding of human wellbeing that does not centre round the satisfaction of wants. Like the ancient European Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, Buddhism proposes that happiness lies in shrinking the self – in giving up our wants, rather than forever chasing after them. It is a thought that occurs to many well-off people from time to time, but it is hard to imagine large numbers of people ever acting on it.

Theories of value that focus on curbing desire run up against the demand for self-realisation, which is one of the strongest impulses in modern life. To be sure, the pursuit of self-realisation does not often result in happiness. But is it happiness that most people are pursuing? Or is it stimulus and excitement? In the Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, Patel informs the reader, the introduction of satellite television has been followed by a crime wave. He seems to think this fact somehow strengthens his argument. But what it tells us is that no culture can now resist the dangerous charms of a life spent in insatiable desire."