Fictitious Commodity Research Articles

As especificidades da mercadoria força de trabalho: Marx revisitado

Coming along with Polanyi's ideas of fictitious commodity, this paper seeks to reveal the logical inconsistencies and silents in the economic science arguments on the labor force as a commodity. Once Marx's influence on the anti-capitalist movements is outstanding, we need to show his contribution, through his economic thought, to the scientific economism. As is well known, when proposed that the commodity sell by the worker was the 'labor force' instead the labor, as the classical economists used to say, Marx was able to built his theory on the capitalist economy theory, which relies on the concept of surplus value.. That is the reason why the paper is specially concern with the failures or weaknesses present in one of the huge Marx contribution to the economics thought: the concept of labor force.

Love as a Fictitious Commodity: Gift-for-Sex Barters as Contractual Carriers of Intimacy

Gift-for-sex (GFS) barters are a niche practice potentially representing the commodification of everyday dating practices. We inquire how GFS exchanges are practiced and understood in contemporary Russia. Second, we situate these in relation to contemporary economic culture. Our project provides answers in two steps based on online content. First, we identify GFS exchange practices within a major dating website. Next, we take the signals exchanged in those dating profiles and display their intersubjective meanings in Russia based on blogs and discussion fora. Our analysis focuses on gender roles and inter-gender conflicts, the use of economic jargon, the link between luxury consumption and sexuality, and understandings of gift-giving and generosity, in order to show how GFS barters, despite being contractual, carry emotional and romantic content. As such, love is under a constant conversion process, through the medium of the contractual gift, into the fictitious commodity form.

What's Nature Got To Do With It? A Situated Historical Perspective on Socio‐natural Commodities

Nature(s) have been commodified since the early days of capitalism, but through processes and socio-natural relationships mediated by their times, histories and localities. While the conditions under which nature's commodities are being trademarked today may be new, their potential for commodification is not. Commodifications of nature should not come as a surprise to environmental social scientists and activists. In this article, I argue that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures. Situated histories of rubber are particularly relevant because, like carbon, ecosystem services and other recently commodified natures, rubber sits comfortably on the line between a fictitious commodity and a commodity produced explicitly for market: the latex alone has almost no use value, and to give it any exchange value, it requires processing. Yet analytically, it is still considered a ‘natural commodity’, different from ‘synthetic rubber’ and other tradable tree latexes in qualities and socio-natural characteristics. However, it is the social relations constituting rubber's production and trade in various rainforest and agro-forestry environments that have given it a positive or negative connotation, rather than its natural properties or the ecological contexts within which it has been produced. By situating rubber in three of its globally important temporal and spatial contexts, I show how it has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment. Understanding how history is told or remains untold is thus an essential part of the politics of knowledge production, but also of human experience and mobilization for change. It should be part of any political ecology analysis.

Labour as a (Fictitious) Commodity: Polanyi and the Capitalist ‘Market Economy’

AbstractIn The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi problematised the commodity status of labour. He described it as ‘fictitious’ and asserted the human aspect of labour necessitates ‘protection’. In bringing Polanyi’s mature works to bear on these claims, this article uses the ‘fictitious commodity’ concept to highlight the tension in neoclassical theory between concrete reality and its idealist construction of the economy. This contradiction directly challenges the veracity of the self-regulating market. The article develops two related themes. The first is Polanyi’s critique of the neoclassical conception of ‘the economy’ as an ideal (market) construct which gave rise to the notion that labour could be regulated by the forces of supply and demand. The second is the lack of logic in the notion of a ‘self regulating’ market and Polanyi’s appreciation of the concrete tendencies of capitalist economies to develop institutional arrangements that ensure the economy is always, and necessarily, more than ‘the market’.

Globalisation and the Commodification of Labour: Temporary Labour Migration

AbstractThere has been a qualitative shift in the character of international labour migration with increased temporary labour migration. With circumscribed employment rights, the increased significance of temporary migrant workers underscores arguments that globalisation has engendered a more profound commodification of labour. The instrumentalist approach, especially of international financial institutions in promoting temporary labour migration as a panacea for development, reinforces this impression. Encapsulated in migration-development discourse, labour migration, like other commodities, is presented as a means of generating export revenue for the South. Karl Polanyi's critique of this market-defined construct of labour as a commodity, when labour can only ever be a fictitious commodity, provides a basis for contesting the representation of labour in the migration-development discourse. However, recourse to a Marxist method is held to be essential if we are to move beyond an appreciation of the process in order to interrogate the rationale that is driving the transformation of labour.

Reflections on Scott Prudham's Knock on Wood: Is Labor‐Power a Fictitious Commodity?

Reflections on Scott Prudham's <i>Knock on Wood</i>: Is Labor‐Power a Fictitious Commodity?

The fictitious commodity: A union view of labor’s antitrust exemptions

Labor is not a commodity, though there are those who would have it treated as if it was one. Antitrust is probably a futile exercise when applied to business, it would be dangerously destructive to apply it to labor. The raison d'Etre of unions is to remove wages from competition and that is a socially necessary purpose. Of course, events of the last several decades have already weakened unions substantially. In their weakened state, unions are less able to accomplish this social purpose, and workers have suffered as a result (for examples see Mishel et al., 1999). Why weaken unions further now?

A re-examination of the great transformation: The establishment of money as a fictitious commodity in the United States

This article re-examines the argument presented by the economic historian Karl Polanyi in his major work, The Great Transformation, regarding the integration of money into a self-regulating market system in the United States. Polanyi argued that money was only included in the self-regulating market system in 1900 with the establishment of a formal gold standard. The establishment of the Federal Reserve System appeared to be the initial response to this development. It is the contention of this article that money was included in the self-regulating market system as early as 1879 with the establishment of a de factor gold standard. In addition, while the Federal Reserve System was a response to the self-regulating market system it was not the initial central banking response, due to the intervention of the U.S. Treasury in the free operation of the gold standard, nor was it a complete response due to the nature of the theory underlying the Federal Reserve Act.

The Fictitious Commodity: A Study of the U.S. Labor Market, 1880-1940.

The Fictitious Commodity: A Study of the U.S. Labor Market, 1880-1940.

The Fictitious Commodity: A Study of the U.S. Labor Market, 1880-1940.

Recruitment and Mobility Railways and Timetables Standardization I: Taylorism Standardization II: Training and Education A Market for Migrants Ford and Fordism Crisis, Depression, and the New Deal The New Status of Labor Conclusion Bibliography Index

The fictitious commodity: a study of the U.S. labor market, 1880-1940

The fictitious commodity: a study of the U.S. labor market, 1880-1940

On the Nature of Production and Contracts in an Arrow-Debreu Economy

Any economic theory, even one characterized by only the simplest exchange relationship, requires a statement concerning the institutional assumptions from which that analysis emanates. In reality, institutions have no natural basis, but rather exist only as sociohuman contrivances. Theorists, too, are notorious for contriving institutions; but, in these instances, their purpose is to act as dei ex machina, rescuing the analysis from any immanent anomalies that might undermine the preconceived goals set by these theorists.1 The history of economic analysis is filled with such creations. Two particularly famous examples of institutions by fiat, both attributable to Leon Walras, are the fictitious commodity (E) that was to be purchased by those persons desiring to save a portion of their income, for which they would receive, in return, shares of perpetual net income; and the assumption that the tatonnement process (groping toward the equilibrium) was first to be carried out and reconciled by the exchange of bons (tickets) prior to the commencement of any actual exchange and production.