Elizabeth Anderson’s expressive theory of value takes the vast plurality of our common sense values and comes up with a way to express the common way we value as individuals in a form that is easily applied to decision making in businesses and governments for determining ethical actions and policy that actually reflect the ways people actually value when scaled up. She then gives several examples of how her common sense reasoning is applied on big political issues.
“My theory of value is pluralistic in two ways that are relevant to political theory: [first] it acknowledges a plurality of authentic but conflicting ideals and conceptions of the good, and it claims that different kinds of goods are rationally valued in different ways….The second kind of pluralism supports a more robust system of social sphere differentiation that requires sharper limits on the scope of the market.” Most liberal economic theories that purport to support liberal values, such as freedom, autonomy, and any type of social welfare, as necessary for human flourishing fail to understand the limits that must be placed on market forces in order to realize these values.
Anderson defines a person as free: “if she has access to a wide range of significant options through which she can express her diverse valuations. Individuals require social settings, governed by distinct social norms recognized and endorsed by others, to develop and express their different valuations….Freedom thus requires multiple sphere differentiation—boundaries not just between the state and the market, but between these institutions and other domains of self-expression, such as family, friendship, clubs, professions, art, science, religion, and charitable and ideal-based associations.” She then defines collective autonomy as “collective self-governance by principles and valuations that everyone, or a majority, reflectively endorses.” While Anderson emphasizes freedom and autonomy she also claims that all liberal values, such as equality, justice, individuality, neutrality, etc., can benefit and be promoted by “the art of separation”.
The art of separation starts with the realization that some goods are valued differently from others in actual practice. The value of a child is very different than the value of a car. “Economic goods are goods that are properly valued as commodities and properly produced and exchanged in accordance with market norms.” The way we produce and exchange children and cars is very different in our society: children should never be exchanged on market norms – cars usually are. “The proper limits of the market are partly defined by answering the following questions. First, do market norms do a better job of embodying the ways we properly value a particular good than norms of other spheres? If not, then we shouldn’t treat them as commodities but rather locate them in non-market spheres. Second, do market norms, when they govern the circulation of a particular good, undermine important ideals such as freedom, autonomy, and equality, or important interests legitimately protected by the state? If so, the state may act to remove the goods from control by market norms.”
In our society a good is properly placed in the economic sphere if it is 1) impersonal (each member of the exchange can be a stranger and has no strings attached), 2) egotistical (the exchange is for each members own benefit without care for the other’s benefit), 3) exclusive (the good can only benefit the purchaser), 4) want regarding (responding to the ability to pay independent of the intensity, need or reason why someone wants it), 5) oriented to “exit” rather than “voice” (exit meant as “take it or leave it” and voice meant as having an influence in a part of the production or distribution of the good). None of the liberal values can be fully realized within the economic sphere – most can only be partially realized. For example economic freedom (having the ability to choose from a wide variety of things at any time) is a type of freedom but it is not the only freedom that is of value in our society.
In contrast to the economic sphere, Anderson gives us her theory of the gift in which the norms of gift giving are almost the exact opposite of the economic sphere. Goods that are gifts are 1) personal (they come with strings attached), 2) altruistic (for the benefit of the other not the gift giver), 3) communal (in that they at least build bonds but often are also shared), 4) need regarding (considered for the recipient’s intensity of need) 5) generally more oriented to voice (in that the gift giver may have listened to the recipient before deciding on a gift).
Anderson then proceeds to acknowledge feminist notions of oppression of women but to critique “solutions” that would move women’s labour further into the market realm as not being helpful. Two particular proposed solutions are 1) the legalization of prostitution and 2) the notion of a state enforced detailed marriage contract.
Human sexual relationships are normally thought of as a gift. There is a certain distain or pity one feels towards prostitutes. These negative feelings are a result of the norm of human sexual relationships falling under the logic of gift giving rather than logic of the economic sphere. Sex between adults should be personal, not impersonal; altruistic, not egotistical; communal, not exclusive; need regarding, rather than want regarding; and oriented to voice rather than exit. Because it breaks all of these norms prostitution is disfavourably viewed. So to answer the first question: do market norms do a better job of how we embody the norms of human sexually? Clearly the answer is: no. therefore we as individuals should not put human sexuality in the market sphere. Now the second question: do market norms, when they govern the circulation of human sexuality, undermine important ideals such as freedom, autonomy, and equality, or important interests legitimately protected by the state? This is not clearly a “yes” if a person wishes to sell their sexuality it does not limit their freedom or autonomy to enter into a non-market sexual relationship at the time or later – in fact it would seem to expand individual freedom and autonomy without destroying the norms. The state may have legitimate interests in population health and other liberal values but it does not need to make prostitution illegal to take care of its interests or protect other liberal values. Anderson sees prostitution as a cheapening of sexual relations but not as a threat to its proper sphere of gift giving – therefore her theory agrees with the common sense judgment that prostitution is not ideal but needs to be tolerated and not criminalized. She would be in favour of some barriers or regulations on prostitution (for public health or safety) but not any attempt to stop, prevent, or criminalize it. She would support the prevention of all human sexuality becoming a commodity. “what confers commodity status as a good is not that people pay for it, but that exclusively market norms govern its production, exchange, and enjoyment.” The presence of prostitution in a society does not make sexuality a commodity ruled by market norms.
In order to “improve” the status of women by having the state enforce freely and autonomously agreed contracts for a marriage where the duties are evenly and equitably split, some have suggested “remaking the personal sphere on a market model” in the form of a detailed marriage contract. Clearly this also moves the marriage relations from the gift giving norm to the market norm and the answer to the first question of: can the market do it better is: no. “[T]he attempt to realize women’s freedom and equality by remaking marriage on the terms of a business partnership threatens to undermine the goods of commitment and intimacy proper to marriage. For the realization of these goods depends upon each partner’s carrying out the projects constitutive of his shared life in a spirit of trust and love rather than of the piecemeal calculation of individual advantage….Being open to the possibility of renegotiating the contract in the light of changed wants is not the same thing as committing oneself to love and care for one’s spouse ‘for better or for worse’”. In this case, because the request is that the government enforce a detailed marriage contract, the norm is being changed by the use of government force. Therefore the second question is clearly a yes and therefore the government should not enforce detailed marriage contracts. (Separation agreements/contracts are a different case.) Anderson does not believe that couples should not enter into deals or contracts with each other; she only claims that government should not move the norms out of the gift logic into the market logic.