The concept offictitious commodities (orfalse commodities) originated inKarl Polanyi's 1944 bookThe Great Transformation and refers to anything treated as market commodity that is not created for the market, specificallyland,labor, andmoney.[1]
For Polanyi, the effort byclassical andneoclassical economics to make society subject to thefree market was a utopian project and, as Polanyi scholarsFred Block andMargaret 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 theMarxian notions of "commodification" and "Commodity fetishism."[3]Fetishism inanthropology refers to the primitive belief that godly powers can inhere in inanimate things, e.g., intotems.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 ofthe 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 wereembedded 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]
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