Fictitious commodities

The concept of fictitious commodities (or false commodities) originated in Karl Polanyi's 1944 book The Great Transformation and refers to anything treated as market commodity that is not created for the market, specifically land, labor, and money.[1]

## Critique of commodification[edit]

For Polanyi, the effort by classical and neoclassical economics to make society subject to the free market was a utopian project and, as Polanyi scholars Fred Block and Margaret Somers claim, "When these public goods and social necessities (what Polanyi calls "fictitious commodities") are treated as if they are commodities produced for sale on the market, rather than protected rights, our social world is endangered and major crises will ensue."[2]

Polanyi's insight follows the Marxian notions of "commodification" and "Commodity fetishism."[3] Fetishism in anthropology refers to the primitive belief that godly powers can inhere in inanimate things, e.g., in totems. Marx uses this concept to describe "commodity fetishism." For Marx, "a commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties." And what is a social relation between people, between "capitalists" and "exploited laborers," instead assumes "the fantastic form of a relation between things."[3]

David Bollier wrote that, according to Polanyi, "prior to the rise of the market as an ordering principle for society, politics, religion and social norms were the prevailing forces of governance. Land, labor and money itself were not regarded chiefly as commodities to be bought and sold. They were embedded in social relationships, and subject to the moral consideration, religious beliefs and community management."[4] As Polanyi points out, these are actually “fictitious commodities” in the sense that they are not truly discrete “products.” Land and human beings have their own sovereign dynamics apart from their treatment as market commodities. Treating them as "mere commodities" creates "dangerous pressures" — as when too much carbon is emitted into the atmosphere or people lose their jobs because they are “redundant.”[4]

## See also[edit]

* Embeddedness
* Economistic fallacy
* Labour is not a commodity

## References[edit]

1. ^ Polanyi, Karl (2001) [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (2nd ed.). Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807056431.
2. ^ Farrell, Henry (18 July 2014). "The free market is an impossible utopia". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
3. ^ a b Marx, Karl (1992) [1867]. Capital: Critique of Political Economy. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0140445688.
4. ^ a b Bollier, David (24 February 2009). "Why Karl Polanyi Still Matters". On The Commons. Retrieved 23 March 2018.

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Commodities and commoditization

Soft commodities|

| General|

* Barley
* Cocoa
* Coffee
* Cotton
* Cottonseed oil
* Flaxseed
* Frozen orange juice
* Oat
* Olive oil
* Palm oil
* Peanut oil
* Potatoes
* Rapeseed
* Rice
* Rye
* Rubber
* Soybean
* Soybean oil
* Sugar
* Tea
* Wheat

|

Animals &
animal products|

* Ambergris
* Bristle
* Butter
* Cashmere
* Civet
* Feathers
* Feeder cattle
* Lean Hog
* Live cattle
* Goats
* Hide (skin)
* Horses
* Ivory
* Lard
* Milk
* Musk
* Pet industry
* Pork bellies
* Pork belly futures
* Sheep
* Silk
* Sponges
* Tallow
* Whalebone
* Wool
* Wool tops

Hard commodities|

| Energy|

* Coal
* Compressed hydrogen
* Crude oil
* Ethanol
* Heating oil
* Natural gas
* Propane
* Thorium
* Uranium

|

Industrial metals|

* Aluminium
* Aluminium alloy
* Cobalt
* Copper
* Lead
* Molybdenum
* Nickel
* Steel
* Tin
* Zinc

Precious metals|

* Gold
* Palladium
* Platinum
* Silver

Organizations|

* Commodity market
* Futures contract
* Futures exchange
* List of commodities exchanges
* List of futures exchanges

Laws|

* Commodity Exchange Act

Miscellaneous|

* Commodification
* Commoditization
* Commodification of nature
* Commodification of the womb
* Commodification of water
* Commodity status of animals
* Fictitious commodities
* Heritage commodification
* Economic value
* Exchange value
* Price
* Use value/utility

* List of traded commodities

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Property

By owner|

* Collective
* Common
* Communal
* Community
* Crown
* Customary
* Cooperative
* Private
* Public
* Self
* Social
* State
* Unowned

By nature|

* Estate
* Croft
* Intangible
* Intellectual
* indigenous
* Personal
* Tangible
* real

Commons|

* Common land
* Common-pool resource
* Digital
* Global
* Information
* Knowledge

Theory|

* Bundle of rights
* Commodity
* fictitious commodities
* Common good (economics)
* Excludability
* First possession
* appropriation
* homestead principle
* Free-rider problem
* Game theory
* Georgism
* Gift economy
* Labor theory of property
* Law of rent
* rent-seeking
* Legal plunder
* Natural rights
* Ownership
* Property rights
* primogeniture
* usufruct
* women's
* Right to property
* Rivalry
* Tragedy of the commons
* anticommons

Applications|

* Acequia (watercourse)
* Ejido (agrarian land)
* Forest types
* Huerta
* Inheritance
* Land tenure
* Property law
* alienation
* easement
* restraint on alienation
* real estate
* title

Rights|

* Air
* Fishing
* Forest-dwelling (India)
* Freedom to roam
* Grazing
* pannage
* Hunting
* Land
* aboriginal
* indigenous
* squatting
* Littoral
* Mineral
* Bergregal
* Right of way
* Water
* prior-appropriation
* riparian

Disposession/
redistribution|

* Bioprospecting
* Collectivization
* Eminent domain
* Enclosure
* Eviction
* Expropriation
* Farhud
* Forced migration
* population transfer
* Illegal fishing
* Illegal logging
* Land reform
* Legal plunder
* Piracy
* Poaching
* Primitive accumulation
* Privatization
* Regulatory taking
* Slavery
* bride buying
* human trafficking
* spousal
* husband-selling
* wife selling
* wage
* Tax
* inheritance
* poll
* progressive
* property
* Theft

Scholars
(key work)|

* Frédéric Bastiat
* The Law
* Ronald Coase
* Friedrich Engels
* The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
* Henry George
* Progress and Poverty
* Garrett Hardin
* David Harvey
* John Locke
* Two Treatises of Government
* Karl Marx
* Das Kapital
* Marcel Mauss
* The Gift
* John Stuart Mill
* Elinor Ostrom
* Karl Polanyi
* The Great Transformation
* Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
* What Is Property?
* David Ricardo
* Murray N. Rothbard
* The Ethics of Liberty
* Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* The Social Contract
* Adam Smith
* The Wealth of Nations

* Categories: Property
* Property law
* by country

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