Understanding value through Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphysical and ethical foundations

This paper provides the metaphysical and ethical foundations for understanding what value is and how to create it. Mapped over Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of desiring production, value becomes enhanced capacity to act (or power) and the desire for value creates our entire social world. We enter social relationships—friendships, families, organisations, nation-states, etc—to enhance our capacity to act. In the process, we create desiring machines or assemblages which are temporary collections of things (people, objects, ideas, etc) arranged to create and disperse value for its participants. These assemblages adhere and are legitimate where they produce value for all their contributors and risk dissolution and harm where they disempower and extract value (i.e. illegitimate desiring-production). An inverse metaphysics to traditional Western thought is required in which, firstly, things are motivated internally rather than externally such as by universal laws or truths, and secondly, existence is inherently dynamic rather than static. In this dynamic, complex world, understanding flows of value and their blockers becomes critical to creating collective value and flourishing.