The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy

by Mariana Mazzucato

Breaking away from the mercantilists, who placed exchange and what was gained from it–gold–at the centre of value creation, he now linked value creation inextricably with production. Developing his classification of productive and unproductive work, Quesnay grouped society into three classes. First came farmers and related occupations working on the land and water; according to Quesnay, this was the only productive class. Next were manufacturers, artisans and related workers who transform the materials they receive from the productive class: wood and stone for furniture and houses, sheep’s wool for clothing and metals from the mines for tools.15 Yet, argued Quesnay, this class did not add value; rather, their work merely recirculated existing value. The third class was the unproductive ‘proprietor’, ‘distributive’ or ‘sterile’ class, which was made up of landlords, nobility and clergy. Here, ‘distributive’ was meant pejoratively: this class redistributes value, but only to itself, for the sole reason that it owns the land and does not give anything in return.16