From Gold to Algorithm: The Revolution of Value
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| Hypercapitalism. AI image |
In contemporary society, wealth appears increasingly elusive. Fortunes fluctuate within hours, markets react to rumors, and digital assets can surge in value without any discernible material basis. These phenomena suggest a profound transformation in the very logic of value. How can we understand a system in which astronomical sums circulate without clear correspondence to goods, labor, or production?
This question cannot be addressed solely in economic terms. It requires a perspective that integrates economy and language, exchange and signification. At this intersection, juxtaposing the classical model of value with its contemporary radicalization reveals a deep conceptual shift: the transition from a value anchored in the real to a value that increasingly operates without any necessary referent.
The Classical Model: Value Between Reference and Difference
In both linguistics and classical political economy, value manifests a dual structure. In semiology, a sign possesses two dimensions: its relation to what it designates and its differential position within a system. Analogously, in economics, a commodity has use value—its concrete utility—and exchange value, situating it within a network of equivalences.
These dimensions maintain both tension and coherence. The system does not close upon itself but preserves a link to something external that provides orientation and limit. Value is not mere circulation; it remains ultimately grounded in a principle that sustains it.
Even the most abstract forms of capital derive from material conditions. Money, while functioning as a general equivalent, maintains a connection to production and labor. When this connection is obscured, Marxian fetishism emerges: social relations are projected onto things, appearing as intrinsic properties.
The Break: The Autonomy of Value
A decisive inflection occurs when this dual structure is disrupted. The referent no longer organizes the system; value begins to function autonomously. Circulation emancipates itself from reference: signs are exchanged not for what they represent but among themselves. As Jean Baudrillard notes in L’échange symbolique et la mort, “signs are exchanged against one another rather than against the real.” This inversion restructures the logic of the entire system.
Money undergoes a similar transformation. Its function is no longer to measure or express pre-existing value; it now produces value through its own circulation. The result is indefinite expansion: a proliferation of equivalences unanchored in production. Value ceases to be the outcome of a process and becomes the effect of circulation itself.
Baudrillard radicalizes the Marxian notion of fetishism. Social relations are not merely projected onto things; signs themselves replace the referent, inaugurating a world of hyperreality in which the real is displaced by symbolic circulation. As Baudrillard observes, “the structural dimension becomes autonomous by excluding the referential dimension, establishing itself on the death of reference.”
The Present as Simulation
This description resonates strongly with contemporary capitalism. The vast fortunes of technology companies are not explained solely by the production of goods or services, but by the valuation of expectations, the circulation of information, and market confidence. A company’s price may multiply without proportional changes in its material base.
A similar dynamic characterizes cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Their value does not depend on clearly identifiable intrinsic utility but on their integration into exchange networks, collective belief in their legitimacy, and capacity for circulation. Value emerges as a function of the system itself rather than as a reflection of external reality.
Even the so-called “attention economy” follows this logic: what circulates are not traditional objects but signals—clicks, views, time spent—that acquire value as they participate in circuits of measurement and comparison.
Here, the real is not disappearing but displaced. Production continues but no longer occupies the central position. The system organizes around circulating signs that validate one another. The distinction between the represented and the representing loses operational significance, producing a world in which simulation dominates the logic of value.
Conclusion: From Value as Measure to Value as Operation
The shift from gold to algorithm is not merely historical metaphor but conceptual mutation. In the classical model, value functioned as a measure: it referred, directly or indirectly, to a substance—labor, utility, matter—that sustained it. Today, value operates as a process: it is produced in and through circulation itself.
This does not imply that value is fictitious. On the contrary, these values generate tangible effects: concentrating power, reorganizing economies, and transforming everyday life. What changes is not their efficacy but their mode of operation. The question is no longer whether value corresponds to reality but how it sustains and expands without such correspondence. In this shift, the analysis of signs and capital converge, revealing a single principle: a system that, weakened in its connection to the referent, finds its structural strength in its reproduction and the autonomy of signs.
References
Baudrillard, J. (1993). Symbolic exchange and death (I. H. Grant, Trans.). Sage. (Original work published 1976)
Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press
Harvey, D. (2010). The enigma of capital and the crises of capitalism. Oxford University Press
Marx, K. (1976). Capital: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1, B. Fowkes, Trans.). Penguin
Saussure, F. de. (2013). Course in general linguistics (R. Harris, Trans.). Bloomsbury. (Original work published 1916)
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism. PublicAffairs
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