Outside the market

Commodification is when something that used to be given or done for free is given a market value and becomes tradable. Marx defined it as when exchange-value comes to dominate use-value. As Brett Scott says, “the amount of space outside the market vortex has diminished as ever more areas get sucked in. This is what we call commodification. Twenty years ago we’d struggle to conceptualize food outside a supermarket, but now we have kids who struggle to conceptualize navigation outside of Google, communication outside of WhatsApp, or dating outside of apps”.

I agree - the market is becoming more and more dominant, and many things that were previously non-saleable have been assigned a price and become subject to market exchange. That’s a process long underway, but it’s been accelerated by the techno-billionaires who pull Trump’s strings. They want to invade every detail of your life so that they can profit from you — what you buy, where you go, what you eat, what you think.

I’m also broadly a materialist, in that I think economic relations and productive forces can explain a lot about human behaviour. For instance the violent inequality of recent decades, and in Europe, stagnation and insecurity, largely explains why most European and US voters are rejecting the parties of the status quo. Many Germans, for example, are pissed off that the Social Democratic Party presided over economic downturn and polarisation, so on Sunday voted further left and right.

The commodification of our lives is part of this economic materialism. In some ways, it hugely conditions and determines our behaviour.

But it’s also enlightening to think of areas which stubbornly resist commodification, and therefore show that humans aren’t always passive objects to be trampled under the boot of the market.

Those who think about commodification and materialism have clearly identified the terrain on which the battle is being fought. They know that economic forces hugely influence behaviour, but they also know that there’s always room for manoeuvre.

It’s a testament to human agency that against overwhelming material force, people are able self-consciously to reflect on their desire for consumer goods and to position themselves outside the market.

One example is from Melanesia. After the Second World War many local people were suddenly bombarded with consumer products for the first time. People who’d always lived off food from the sea and their gardens suddenly encountered machines and modernity. You’d think that the lure of refrigerators and canned food would prove too tempting. But some people actively decided to disengage from the market because they preferred their old subsistence lifestyles.

Another case is infant childcare, where many people, even in rich countries, seem happy to donate clothing, time and companionship. A new-born in the neighbourhood can strengthen community bonds. When a baby arrives it’s usually out of the question to even think about money.

Along the same lines, Britain’s National Health Service provides free healthcare at the point of use. Nurses are underpaid, often mistreated and overworked. But because of their sense of duty and care, and because the system is social and universal (and mostly seem to involve very nice people), they’re absolutely amazing, punching far above the weight implied by their salaries (about £35k a year on average, or US$44k). NHS nurses have a commitment to the community and society.

Nursing as it’s been practised in the British context can’t easily be broken down into components of utility and paid accordingly — there’s something inherently unquantifiable about it. Preservation of this prized social, nationwide asset should be uppermost in politician’s priorities. The NHS should be considered good value for money. (Unfortunately, it isn’t — both main parties seem intent on running it down and flogging parts of it off. One of the biggest risks is a trade deal with the US).

Another example of how not everything has a price occurred to me when reading this article by Anne Applebaum about the Ukraine war.

Trump literally doesn’t understand the war or Zelensky’s success in defending Ukraine against Russia. Trump thinks that Zelensky “has no cards” because Trump is a greedy materialist who only understands big money and hard power.

But as Applebaum says, Zelensky’s cards are that he “leads a society that organizes itself, with local leaders who have legitimacy… a society that has come, around the world, to symbolize bravery. He has a message that moves people to act instead of just scaring them into silence.”

Against all the odds, Ukrainians work together for the common good. After three years civil society still volunteers, and a million soldiers still fight. Trump, with his narrow, selfish transactionalism, can’t conceive of any reason why anybody would do anything other than for power or money.

And it’s here where I think part of today’s popular resistance must lie. Despite the ever-encroaching tentacles of the market, despite the billionaire techno-coup underway right now in the US, the transactionalists and the commodifiers are inherently ill-equipped to cope with those who think a different way. Can you imagine Zuckerberg walking round to his neighbour’s house with soup? To do something in a good cause for anything other than self-gain blows their minds.

Volunteerism and social solidarity aren’t magic. I’m not naïve. We’re up against monstrous power. Economic resistance in the form of strikes, direct action and consumer boycotts will be a big part of the response. Collective action can be more potent than brute force and money. But the power of the ordinary majority may partly lie in operating outside the imperatives of the commodity world. As Leonard Cohen sang: “There are cracks, cracks in everything. That’s how the light gets in”.