In the history of economic thought, there has been rather discontinuous attention paid to the role of human competences and capabilities in the production of value. This theme has recently been popularised by some members of the Chicago school. For example, in October 1962, the Journal of Political Economy published a special supplement on the so-called ‘human capital’, officially introducing a new field of research in the literature (second paragraph). In particular, Becker elaborated a precise and systematic microeconomic theory based on mainstream marginalism. His scientific work produced both a mathematical speculative part and a series of statistical findings (third paragraph), of which the methodological approach is based on individualistic materialism. In reality, in adopting the paradigm of homo oeconomicus, greater stress is placed on the quantitative aspect of the construct, the ‘capital’, than on the qualitative side, the ‘human’(fourth paragraph).