Towards a Commodified World? Re-Reading Economic Development in Western Economies

Abstract

Abstract A recurring assumption across the social sciences is that non-market economic practices are disappearing and being replaced by commodified practices where goods and services are produced and delivered for monetized exchange by firms for profit-motivated purposes. In this paper, this commodification thesis is evaluated critically. Analyzing the volume of commodified and non-commodified work in the advanced economies, the commodified sphere is revealed to be far from hegemonic and receding rather than penetrating deeper during the last four decades. This is here explained in terms of both the prevalence of resistance cultures to market-ism and the contradictions inherent in the structural shift towards commodification. The outcome is a call to transcend the view of the commodified realm as victorious, all-powerful and hegemonic, and for greater recognition to be given to the feasibility of alternative futures beyond a commodified world. Introduction The idea that we live in a capitalist world organized around the systematic pursuit of profit in the marketplace is something commonly assumed by business leaders, journalists and academic commentators of all political persuasions. The predominant meta-narrative about economic development is that there has been a shift away from (pre-modern or traditional) non-commodified work in western economies and towards the production and delivery of goods and services for monetised exchange by firms for the purpose of profit. The starting point of this paper, however, is recognition that despite the popularity of this view about the trajectory of economic development, evidence has been rarely presented to validate this commodification thesis. Given that the very basis of the social sciences is that any theory should be corroborated before being accepted, the aim of this paper is to subject this reading of economic development to critical scrutiny. After all, no other idea in the social sciences is accepted without detailed corroboration and there is no reason why this widely accepted notion should not be subjected to the same close scrutiny. Here, in consequence, this dominant reading of economic development that closes off the future to anything other than a commodified world is put under the spotlight. To do this, answers will be sought to a series of questions. How deeply has the commodified realm penetrated western economies? Is the trend towards ever more commodified economies? Or do non-market economic practices persist? If so, how can their persistence be explained? And what are the implications for understanding economic development and the future of work? To answer these questions, firstly, the commodification thesis that so dominates, albeit often implicitly, social scientific enquiry is outlined and following this, the extent to which profit-motivated monetised transactions have displaced non-commodified economic practices is evaluated critically. Revealing that even in the so-called advanced economies, the penetration of the market is relatively shallow and that there is little evidence of its on-going incursion, it will be argued that the non-commodified sphere can be no longer viewed as a minor vestige of some pre-capitalist past. Arguing that the persistence of non-commodified economic practices result from a combination of both the existence of cultures of resistance to market-ism and the contradictions inherent in the structural shifts associated with the pursuit of commodification, the paper thus concludes with a call to transcend the view that the market is victorious, colonizing and all-powerful and for greater recognition to be given to the possibility of alternative futures for work beyond a commodified world. The Commodification Thesis Every society has to produce, distribute, and allocate the goods and services that people need to live. Consequently, all societies have an economy of some type. …