The concept of value is deeply embedded in debates about the economy, yet it is also deeply problematic. There are many different ways of understanding value, including many that are not directly concerned with economic questions, and we must begin by establishing some clarity over which versions we are engaging with. This chapter will argue, however, that even the best-established economic understandings of value are radically unsatisfactory. It is therefore essential, before outlining a more coherent understanding of value, to clear some ground by explaining what is wrong with the established approaches. This chapter criticises three in turn: the theory of value implicit in the marginalist tradition in economics, Marx’s labour theory of value, and the notion of value at work in more popular discourses of value creation and value extraction such as the recent work of Mariana Mazzucato. This discussion, however, is not intended as a comprehensive critique of these traditions, but rather as a means to mark out the space that the argument of this book aims to occupy.

This chapter looks at why the UK was so lacking in resilience when COVID-19 struck. It will examine the corrosive narrative of neoliberalism, which holds that the state is an unwelcome intrusion into people’s lives and the economy, showing how the resulting deregulation and financialisation of the economy replaced productive value creation with exploitative value extraction.

It will detail the cronyism that built up as a relationship of mutual dependence between politicians and the wealthy developed and describe the lack of transparency as pandemic contracts were let that racked up enormous bills but often failed to deliver, spectacularly so in the case of the £37 billion track and trace system.

It will then examine the public spending cuts and damaging reorganisation of the NHS and public health functions after 2012, which left the sector unable to respond effectively to COVID-19. In the rush to free up beds, 25,000 elderly people were discharged into care homes with instructions that negative COVID-19 tests were ‘not required’. Deaths in care homes in the pandemic became a national scandal, both COVID-19 deaths and many other ‘unexpected’ deaths as a result of what appeared to be a systematic withdrawal of normal medical care.