Classical anti-commodification arguments: Commodification and fictitious commodities – Polanyi’s decisive contribution

Overview & Synopsis

Karl Polanyi is many people’s go-to economic historian as regards commodification. This chapter draws attention to the analytical dimension of Polanyi’s work and highlights the bounded application of the core concept of fictitious commodity. With this concept Polanyi designates exclusively the three production factors that “are not commodities” but must be “dealt with as commodities” for capitalism to work. In this sense, Polanyi’s concept of commodification is less extensive but more specific than general criticism of market extension suggests. He basically proposes an analysis of what commodification produces as being the primacy of instrumental rationality in society rather than being any extension of markets.