Everyone thinks they can control money until it starts to control them<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the sphere of ideas one of the more fruitful results of May 1968 was the spread, in\nFrance and elsewhere, of the criticism of the commodity as representing the reduction of\nuseful things to objects of commerce and of social and personal relationships to\ncommercial ones. With commodity production, work ceases to be the creative activity of\npeople producing needed useful things and becomes mere labour turning out articles of\ncommerce for sale on a market. People cease to be related to each other as members of a\ncommunity, whether democratic or hierarchical, and become mere economic units related to\neach other only through money as buyers and sellers of some object or other of commerce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This criticism of the extreme commercialisation of society that capitalism involves\ngoes back to the beginning of the 19th century and to the Romantic tradition that then\ncame into being as a reaction to the ravages of emerging industrial capitalism. Already in\n1840 Thomas Carlyle was denouncing the situation where “cash payment has become the\nsole nexus of man to man”. In France in the 1960s and 1970s this sort of criticism of\ncapitalism was expressed in particular by the Situationists who gave a prominent place to\nthe passive consumption of commodities as a feature of the “spectacular society”\nthey were denouncing. The commodity was considered as something undesirable that ought to\nbe done away with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what exactly is a commodity? A commodity is, basically, a product of labour and\nnature that has been produced with a view to being sold. It is, in other words, an object\nof commerce, an item of wealth that is bought and sold. A commodity is not simply a useful\nthing, some part of nature transformed so as to be capable of satisfying some human need.\nIt is this, but this is not its essential characteristic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The essential characteristic of a commodity is that it is a part of nature that has\nbeen transformed primarily with a view to being exchanged for some other product. An item\nof wealth produced for this purpose acquires, in addition to what might be called its\nnatural usefulness, or use-value, an exchange value which is the amount of other\ncommodities that it can exchange for. Commodity-production gives rise to money, prices and\nbuying and selling, and achieves its highest form in capitalism where literally everything\ncan, and generally does, become an object of commerce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically, or at least it may appear so to some, this criticism of capitalism was\nprovoked, not by capitalist conditions of primary poverty and destitution but by the\nprolonged period of capitalist prosperity that eventually followed the last world war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Post-war reconstruction and the expansion of world markets led to full employment and,\nas a consequence, to rising living standards for wage and salary workers. That workers\nbecame materially better off over this period is a fact that cannot be denied. A majority\ndid acquire a whole range of consumer durables that are now taken for granted but which\nbefore the war were luxuries enjoyed only by the rich, such things as fridges, washing\nmachines, televisions and of course cars. People were also able to build up savings, go on\nholidays abroad, and more and more of them to acquire their own house. All this would have\nbeen unthinkable before the war and no doubt goes a long way towards explaining why people\nhave accepted capitalism over the last forty years, particularly as the\n“socialist” alternative appeared to be represented by the Russian state\ncapitalist empire where it was evident that ordinary workers were much worse off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Defenders of capitalism were able to present their system as a “consumer\nsociety” geared to providing an ever-rising standard of living for ordinary people.\nCritics, however, began to point to the social costs of such a growth-oriented, market\nsociety. These criticisms are neatly summed up in the titles of three books written by\nVance Packard, an American journalist, in the late 1950s: The Hidden Persuaders<\/em>\n(1957), The Status Seekers<\/em> (1959) and The Waste Makers<\/em> (1960).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first was a description of the methods employed by advertisers to try and\nmanipulate people into buying things by using brainwashing techniques derived from\npsychology. The second, perhaps the weakest, described how people strove to acquire\nconsumer goods as much as a status symbol as for their usefulness, while the third exposed\nhow manufacturers employed techniques such as planned obsolescence to maintain the market\nfor their goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Packard was an investigative journalist rather than a social philosopher but in his\nbooks are to be found all the themes that have been developed at a more philosophical and\ntheoretical level by others, particularly in continental Europe and those in its tradition\nlike Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. For example, the theme that in capitalism the needs\nwhich the market is supposed to be geared to meeting are not our real needs but artificial\nones created by capitalist manipulation of our psychology, and the theme that a\ngrowth-oriented society involves a waste of resources and an unbalanced relationship with\nthe rest of nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a theory of the commodity provided the basis for a modern criticism of capitalist\nsociety. The needs which a commodity is supposed to satisfy are denounced as false needs.\nThe advertising required to create these false needs is denounced for commercialising\nsociety and turning it into one huge marketplace. And the consumption of materials and\nenergy to produce the goods to satisfy these false needs is denounced as waste placing an\nintolerable burden on nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This theory does have some attraction, even some substance, but when the question of\nwhat sort of society should replace capitalism arises, as it has to, weaknesses appear.\nNearly all of the exponents of the theory, while certainly critical of the\nmarket-motivated, growth-oriented society that is capitalism, and indeed providing some\ntrenchant criticisms of it, turn out to be in favour of retaining some degree of commodity\nproduction and exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One example is Jeremy Seabrook. In The Myth of the Market<\/em>, published last year,\nhe powerfully criticises the spread of market values for “leading to social\ndisintegration in the West, and in the Third World to the destruction of indigenous\ncultures that are the only surviving examples of how people can truly live in harmony with\ntheir environment”. Only he then ends lamely by denying that the way-out is to get\nrid of the market and the production of useful things as commodities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue is not so much one of going ‘beyond’ the market economy, but rather of\n reducing it to a minimal, functional level in our lives, putting it in its (necessary)\n place (page 33).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Another example is the Canadian writer William Leiss in his book The Limits to\nSatisfaction<\/em>, subtitled “On Needs and Commodities”, that was first published\nin 1976. After criticising capitalism for inciting insatiable needs, he speaks only about\nthe “limitation of the sphere of commodity exchange” (British edition, page 116)\nand of the need to “lessen the importance of commodities as factors in the\nsatisfaction of human needs” (page 122):<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is nothing inherently evil in commodities and market exchanges as such, and there\n is no reason to believe that it would be desirable to extirpate them completely. There is\n cause for concern only when commodity exchange tends to become the exclusive mode for the\n satisfaction of needs (page 117).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Such observations show Leiss to be a superficial critic of the commodity. Clearly, his\nobjection is not to the exchange-value aspect of the commodity as a product of labour and\nnature that has become an object of commerce, but merely to the fact that, in his view,\nmost commodities have now ceased to be real use-values since they are being produced to\nsatisfy manipulated needs. Abolish this aspect of the modern commodity and, for him,\ncommodity production and exchange become acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What critics like Leiss of the commodity as an expression of false needs have\noverlooked is that there is another reason for doing away with commodity production and\nexchange: that this will end the domination of production by blindly-operating economic\nlaws which impose the accumulation of exchange-value as the primary objective of\nproduction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wherever wealth is produced for sale on a market – wherever, that is, there is\ncommodity-production – economic forces are unleashed which come to dominate production and\norient it away from satisfying people’s needs. The operation of these laws means that\nproduction is not subject to human control, with the result that it is not human values\nthat are paramount in society, but market values, commercial values, the cash nexus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a truly human society is to be created where we can relate to each other as members\nof a real community instead of as isolated atoms colliding on the market place, then the\ncommodity-form must disappear completely. This is not a question, as Leiss suggests, of\nthe “extirpation” of commodity-production, money and buying and selling as\nthings that are “inherently evil”, of using coercive means to prevent commodity\nexchange from taking place; what is involved is creating the conditions (common ownership\nof productive resources by the whole community) in which it has no sense. The death of the\ncommodity will be the beginning of a truly human society existing in harmony with the rest\nof nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Author: ALB<\/p>\n\n\n\n Please email your comments about this article to feedback@worldsocialism.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to the Economics Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nTruly human society<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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