Why are market instruments so widespread in contemporary environmental governance? Critical scholars have underlined the neoliberal practices and thoughts, which are held to sustain such a trend. Yet the reasons behind their use cannot be explained by the desire to further “commodify” nature. In this paper, I argue that the development of market mechanisms in environmental governance should be explained by the depoliticising tendency of capitalism, by which the possibility of explicit social planning of the economy is hidden. In other words, ‘command-and-control' mechanisms open up the democratic possibility of deciding which use values should be produced and under which conditions. By making exchange value prevail through the price mechanisms, market instruments in environmental governance seek to ensure that the law of value remains uncontested, and that private property as a political form is sustained.