Primary and Secondary Economy - On the Ontological Distinction Between Value Formation, Work, and Systemic Extraction

Contemporary economic theory predominantly treats work as market-organised, monetisable activity. What remains invisible in this view is that a substantial portion of socially necessary, life- and system-sustaining work does not arise within the market, but precedes it. This paper introduces the distinction between primary economy and secondary economy in order to specify this structural blind spot. Primary economy is understood as that form of work which directly brings forth reality, livability, and social coherence: care work, commons practice, cultural and epistemic work, ecological reproduction, as well as self-determined, enactively embedded activities. This work is not substitutable, not arbitrarily scalable, and eludes complete monetary representation. Secondary economy, by contrast, describes those economic processes that extract, formalise, administer, and skim value from the primary economy. It is derivative in nature, operates on the basis of abstraction, standardisation, and control, and tends structurally to obscure its own dependence on primary value formation. On the basis of neurodivergent, artistic research and enactive systems analysis, it is shown that the systematic overvaluation of the secondary economy leads to the exhaustion of social, ecological, and epistemic resources. The distinction proposed here allows for a re-conceptualisation of work, value, and productivity beyond capitalist value thresholds and forms a foundation for alternative economic models that prioritise livability over growth. This paper functions as an interface text within a larger operator-based research corpus. Core concepts are applied here, not re-derived. The underlying research operates in a non-linear, rhythmically recursive epistemic mode grounded in an autistic form of structural perception; the present text provides an interface translation for academic contexts.