“It is arguably the single most important concept in the entire logic of capitalism: commodification, more specifically the commodification of labour. A commodified world is one in which the vast majority of the population is dependent for their economic survival on the sale of their labour power as a commodity in the form of wage or salary work. In other words, to survive, people must sell their ability to work in the same kind of market that exists for any other commodity. As the 18th-century political economist Adam Smith noted, the demand for men is like that for any other commodity. Whatever the many positive and commendable aspects of the market economy, the reduction of people to commodities comes with two negative consequences.

First, when people become commodities they become subject to pitiless market forces beyond their control. They face a world characterised by chronic insecurity, since the market for the sale of their labour is, like the market for any commodity, subject to uncontrollable fluctuation. People become dependent on forces indifferent to them, or to any individual. As the Danish sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen put it in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), ‘the market becomes to the worker a prison’. To survive and try to flourish, people adopt the values and norms of the market prison – competitive individualism, egotism, a focus on short-term material gain. In practice, these values detract from a satisfying life.

Commodification has another, equally destructive aspect. When people are reduced to commodities, they lack the ability to make moral claims on society. Just as we have no moral responsibility to bushels of wheat or consignments of mobile phones, we have no moral responsibility to workers who are conceived of as commodities, labour units instead of people. Not only is a commodity without a right to a job to begin with, it certainly has no right to paid sick days or vacation time, to pensions or healthcare, or to protection against arbitrary dismissal, to say nothing of a guaranteed severance package or similar redundancy benefits.

Rather than being treated with dignity and respect – as valued members of a community whose work contributes to the general good – workers as commodities are merely another factor of production, no more worthy of considerate treatment than the machines they manipulate.”

The above quote comes from an article in Aeon magazine written by Benjamin Radcliffe. It’s an enjoyable read that examines which political system might best support “happiness economics.”

In regard to the above passage, though, Radcliffe succinctly sums up the sad reality we face when we do not continuously examine, question, and update our operating systems. Additionally, it further solidifies for me the notion that if we cannot imagine a better world, a better world surely will not take shape.

I sincerely hope that, sooner rather than later, we all come to understand that we DO NOT need to adopt the values of a system that, in practice, only detract from a satisfying life.

Tags:capitalismeconomicsHappinessmarxismsocialism