According to Marx, capitalism has commodified people by turning them into commodities. MarxÆs argument is that labor does not only produce commodities like clothing or coffee; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts). The bourgeois system has developed to the point that laborers are a ôcommodity,ö selling their labor power much like a farmer sells a crop of oranges. This creates a condition in which labor power (human life) is subject to free market forces. People and machines are one and the same. Laborers who must sell themselves piecemeal ôare a commodity like every other article of commerceö (Communist Manifesto, 168).
At one time, families worked on their own as a self-sufficient unit to meet their basic needs such as shelter, food and clothing. This was a relationship unblemished by commerce. With the advent of Capitalism and industry, however, the family producing unit was broken up, and people went to work individually for others. By entering the commercial relationship of buying and selling, people became commodified.
In the Communist Manifesto Marx claimed the bourgeoisie reduced the family relation into a mere money relation. Even physicians, lawyers, poets, priests and the man of science have been turned into paid wage laborers. Marx argued that the bourgeoisie turned personal worth into exchange value, and he provided many examples of commodification including privatization of government services that made work such as health care and education provided on a user-pays system, rather than as a public service free of charge. Marx considered commodification dehumanizing.
While I agree with Marx that commodification is dehumanizing when it transforms relationships into commercial relationships of buying and selling, his concept is limited in todayÆs world. Marx believed there were only two classes, but there are many more than that in the 21st Century, including...