In his 1944 book ‘The Great Transformation’, political economist Karl Polanyi describes Capitalism as a commodity fiction.
Capitalism, or the market society, is constructed on the foundation of a fiction – namely that nature, labour and money are commodities;they are produced for the marketplace, for consumption.
But Nature is not a commodity. It is not produced by us for market consumption.
Neither are human being(who provide labour). Not even money.
But in the market system, all these three are treated as commodities.
The result is a phenomenal growth, but also massive externalities in the form of environmental destruction, poverty and cyclical monetary breakdowns.
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