Labour, Rights, and Public Value: Reconstructing Value Theory for a Just Economy

This working paper reconstructs value theory by defining value as net contribution, relative to a specified baseline, to social wellbeing, ecological integrity, and institutional legitimacy and resilience. It rejects the reduction of value to price, utility, labour time, or market output, and instead treats value as a systemic and relational property shaped by rights, institutions, and ecological conditions. On this basis, the paper redefines labour as contributive agency, integrates non-market and unpaid contributions into value theory without commodification, and introduces a typology of value creation, extraction, and transfer. It shows how rights and privileges structure who can contribute, who benefits, and who extracts from shared systems, and why harmful or extractive activity does not constitute value even when it is productive or profitable. The framework is designed to be applicable across economic contexts and to remain coherent under conditions of ecological constraint, institutional stress, and limited growth. This is version 2.0 of an independent working paper intended to inform economic theory, macroeconomic modelling, and institutional design.