What do left wing social thinkers mean by commodification?

Question

I was listening to a left wing podcast (Ashes Ashes) and they were talking a lot about commodification of human relationships. I get broadly that it means turning things into something like an economic transaction, but I wonder if someone could give me a more in-depth explanation and link to further reading.

Answer 1

Commodification is the process of turning something (human being, relationship, concept) into economic value and using that economic value to sell something. The reason it is linked to the Left Wing is because it is based on Marx and Engels ideas about the exploitation of people into paid labor. The Communist Manifesto quotes “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.” Which is really the foundation for commodification.

For example, women are often objectified and used by the advertising industry to sell something. If you think about advertisements for Axe (Lynx in the UK) they often show men being covered in Axe and then women being attracted to them. This is the commodification of sexual attraction to sell a fragrance. Another example is the commodification of Pride - there is not a company out there who has not used Pride or Pride themed items to generate more income. There are hundreds of examples of this and they do appear frequently in advertising, but are obvious in all media.

In terms of reading, you are more likely to get somewhere if you split your reading into different subjects. Therefore the commodification of childhood and women are common to find in most book stores (The Commodification of Childhood by Daniel Cook and Objectification of Women in the Media by Christine Evans are good starting points.) A quick run through Google scholar will give you a range of articles which cover anything from the commodification of education to that of photography.