Description
Book SynopsisIn recent years activists around the globe have challenged the commodification of water, education, health care, and other essential goods, while academics have warned from unintended effects when everything can be bought and sold. But what is commodification? And what is the problem with commodification? In The Critique of Commodification, Christoph Hermann argues that commodification entails production for profit rather than social needs, and that production for profit has a number of harmful effects, including the exclusion of those who cannot pay, the marginalization of those whose collective purchasing power is not large enough, and the focus on highly profitable forms of production over more socially beneficial and ecologically sustainable alternatives. Drawing upon and extending the work of Marx, Polyani, and Luxemburg, Hermann goes beyond the standard moral critiques of markets and adopts a materialist approach to emphasize the dispossession of public resources and to highlight
Trade Review... an important and thought-provoking contribution, one that deserves to be widely read, and it certainly provides the basis for further work in an area that is of the utmost importance. * John McCay, Honorary Professor in Development Studies at Deakin University, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: The Critique of Commodification Chapter 2: A Theory of Commodification Chapter 3: Politics of Commodification Chapter 4: Consequences of Commodification Chapter 5: Limits of Commodification Chapter 6: Rediscovering Use Value Chapter 7: Alternatives to Commodification: Use Value Society Notes Index
