Does capitalism drive towards the commodification of everything?

He argues that claims about ‘the commodification of everything’ are a staple of 21st century left (and some liberal) analysis and critique. The specific arguments made about the commodification of everything vary, however, and they need to be evaluated in different ways.

In this seminar, he takes up one of the key claims: that capitalism contains a fundamental drive or tendency to commodify everything. He arguse that even the best-articulated versions of this position are not convincing in part because they do not clearly specify the mechanisms pushing for universal (as opposed to just expanding) commodification.

Further, neither the proponents of this claim nor authors who have responded critically to it have given enough thought to how the claim can be evaluated or to what it would mean to commodify everything.

Derek Hall presents the best case he can assemble for the proposition, provides historical examples of surprising and highly consequential commodifications that the literature has not considered, develops novel ideas about the forces pushing for and against commodification under capitalism and draws conclusions about the existence of a fundamental commodifying drive.

About Derek Hall

Derek Hall is Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

His research covers the political economy of food, agriculture, land and environment (especially in Japan and Southeast Asia), and the history and theory of capitalism. He is also currently researching reporting on and policy regarding greenhouse gas emissions from air travel at Canadian universities.

He is the author of Land (Polity, 2013) and, with Philip Hirsch and Tania Murray Li, of Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (NUS Press and University of Hawai’i Press, 2011).