By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

IN the first and second weeks of October 2014, Max Keiser invited John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, as his guest on the Russia Today programme ‘Keiser Report’.
Most of the episodes dealt with ways in which the Cold War of the post-Hitler years worsened what David Korten called ‘corporate cannibalism’ and Diane Harvey called mad ‘corporation disease’.
In one of the episodes Keiser remarked about one of the ultimate objectives of financialism as getting society to ‘price everything’ and ‘value nothing’.
This remark made me appreciate that I had not taken time to think of the main difference between ‘price’ and ‘value’, between pricing and valuing. I turned to the Oxford Dictionary of Economics for a start:
“The amount of money paid per unit for a good or service. This is easy to observe for many goods and services: in any ordinary shop, customers will find displayed a price at which as many or few units they wish can be purchased. For some goods and services, however, price is less easy to observe. Special terms may be available for large orders, for repeat orders, for particular types of customer…”
Then I looked up value:

1. Value equals price times quantity.

2. A synonym for price.

3. A general term of praise, used in a phrase such as ‘good value’. Value in this sense refers to something similar to price but more important and more permanent.
That definitely was not a precise definition.
Then I returned to Max Keiser’s remark, that the ultimate dream of the drivers of corporatism and financialism is to drive society to a stage where it knows only how (and is wiling) to put a ‘price’ on everything and forgets how to value anything. In this way price becomes the only available measure of worth; in this way, almost everything becomes available for sale to the highest bidder and subject to unending mark-ups, mark-downs and even complete write-offs.

Then I returned to history:
l When they did not rely entirely on outright wars of pillage, white slave hunters gave whisky, beads and other trinkets to corrupted African leaders in order to be allowed to raid villages for slaves. Did the whisky, beads and other trinkets represent the value of the men, women and children killed or captured? What was the effect of such pricing on human life and dignity?
l When Charles Rudd and his colleagues cheated King Lobengula about prospecting for gold and mining in Zimbabwe, could the sugar, the guns and the boat they offered the king as a price or bribe come anywhere near the permanent value of what was later called Rhodesia and is now called Zimbabwe? What was the net effect of such pricing?
l Judas Iscariot named his price for betraying and identifying Jesus to his enemies as 30 pieces of silver! But could this ever be equated with the value of Jesus’s life especially to the millions of Christ’s worshippers all over the world today? What was the meaning of such a price?
l Those waging the financial terror and warfare which caused Madzimbahwe to curse their own national currency used the price of the Zimbabwe Dollar in relation to the price of their own currencies on currency markets which they controlled.

But the value of the national currency went far beyond its manipulated and targeted price as determined in relation to the currencies of those waging economic war on us.
It was not our index which told us that our national currency was valueless; just as it was not our living law which told us that reclaiming our land from white settlers was criminal.
l There is value in the bridges, schools, hospitals, buildings and training centres built using the national currency. These still stand.
l There was value in the relationships which the currency helped build, articulate and facilitate, among and within families, among and within businesses. That articulation and facilitation is missing today, which may explain why citizens now have to pay in advance for services from entities they already own, such as ZESA power, making them the same as foreigners who have just arrived in the country. “Thirty days to pay” is no longer part of business culture under so-called dollarisation.
l Madzimbahwe, however, have never thought of that financial warfare of 2007-2009 in terms of the obvious difference between a market price on markets which one cannot control or influence, on one hand, and the value of one’s own currency in its own society and for its own society. Jesus was worth more than 30 pieces of silver to the followers of Jesus but his enemies got him for 30 pieces of silver only because Judas Iscariot agreed to put a price on his head and to set and accept the price!

The Permanence of Value:

The Oxford Dictionary of Economics just cited did mention vaguely that there is something permanent about value, which was to imply, without explaining, that prices are temporary, always fluctuating, deceiving, distorted, and subject even to terror and hyper-manipulation; while value is permanent. Kukosha hausiri mutengo; kukoshesa hakusi kutengesa.
To show what I mean by pricing, my readers could refer to South Africa’s Business Times for 9 October 2014. Just one excerpt is enough:
“The [stock market] crashes of 1929, 1987, 2001 and 2008 were all focused on this portentous month (October). And amid signs of another perfect storm of negatives brewing in the world economy, stocks are again plummeting … Since the beginning of last month
(September 2014) the FTSE 100 has fallen more than 10 percent, with much of the drop concentrated in the past week — a level of deterioration that satisfies the official definition of correction… Not since the peak of the Eurozone crisis in 2011-2012 have we seen such manifest panic. Before that, it was the collapse of Lehman Brothers, six years ago. Nor is it just equities; bond yields, too, are back at levels that indicate a danger of deflations and depression.”
Now, it is not value but price that is being “corrected”. But how does one talk of price correction without first admitting that prices are usually wrong?
These are the consequences of pricing everything and valuing nothing.
How can real values shoot up-and-down like a yo-yo?
Financialism and the mad corporation disease aim to put a price on anything and everything so that it is “quantifiable in terms of money, profit and loss.” In Zimbabwe, since the so-called dollarization, we have to add “quantifiable in terms of foreign money”. Everything has to be renamed and quantified in terms of foreign money: love, sex, gold, marriage, food, water, lighting, land, fresh air and sunshine.
There is a movement in Zimbabwe to rename and quantify as sex workers those women who sell their bodies for sex with the highest bidder.
In the UK, Holland and Switzerland, prostitution is now a quantifiable contributor to the GNP. In 2013 Newsday led in this effort with a story called “Protection of the sex worker.” The Herald did the same on the same day with another story called “12 383 sex workers register.”
Through the state, the people of Zimbabwe owned ZESA as a utility service. By authorizing ZESA to install pre-paid metres and by requiring users of ZESA power to obtain service only after “juicing” those meters, the state in fact forced citizens to pay for ZESA twice.
Alternatively, we can say the state privatised ZESA and asked the owners to pay up-front and in advance for its service, as if it were a private company owned by someone else.
In the short term, this policy looks rational and even inevitable. But it raises questions about the real value of ZESA to the citizens who are its original creators and owners.
Now before this ZESA move has been debated, there are calls to install pre-paid water meters as well.
Why should citizens pay money up-front for service from an entity which they already own?
What is the difference now between Telecel and ZESA in terms of value and ownership?
Those questions are not raised because we have been manipulated so that we no longer differentiate between pricing and value.
Everything is now price, but price always jumps up-and-down like a yo-yo because that is what generates corporate profits.
Once we agree to putting a price on our head we implicitly agree to be subjected to mark-ups, mark downs and write-offs.