Total commodification
Wang Huning is a member of the Chinese politburo. He is widely considered on of the most powerful theoreticians in China, and works as head of the Chinese Policy Research Office and chairman of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization.
In this chapter of America Against America, Wang Huning describes the tendency of Capitalism to commoditize aspects of human existence, and the benefits and dangers that this represents to the world at whole.
Total commodification
Another feature of American culture is its high degree of commodification. It is a typical decadent capitalist society.1 Entering every kind of store, you find a glimmering lineup of products on display inside, with all one can think of on hand, and it dazzles the eyes. In America, almost anything can be a commodity, from the physical body, to the air, to abstract concepts; all become commodities without exception. Therefore, when Marx analyzed capitalist society, it was a penetrating insight to regard commodities as the basis of society with this mode of production. In today’s capitalist society, this feature develops more fully, although there are many differences in this form of expression.
Commodities are a fundamental aspect of American society, the most typical manifestation of which is that human beings become commodities. This extensive, total commodification is the basic tendency of the capitalist mode of production, and cannot be opposed or dominated by the subjective will of people.2
The question that needs to be asked is not how this high degree of commodification came about, nor to what extent it can develop. To study the management process of a society, what we need to ask is: What effect does commodification have on the intricate and complicated management procedures of a society?
The development of modern human society, the improvement of all aspects of modern human life, the complex intertwining of technology, politics, economy, culture, entertainment, health, art, transportation, and other fields have brought severe challenges to the social management system. Can a political and administrative system bear the full burden of modernity? This is a difficult question for all countries. For both theoretical and practical reasons, I am afraid that no political and administrative system has the capacity to directly manage and assume all these responsibilities. If any political and administrative system were to assume these duties, due to structural and functional constraints, it will inevitably lead to overextension and paralysis. Because the energy of any political and administrative system is limited, in small countries such as in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, etc, the government has the possibility of holding its own. For large societies, especially those with hundreds of millions of people, it is unlikely that the government can directly and comprehensively manage all levels and areas of society. History has shown that societies that have embarked on this path of central planning have often had political and administrative systems which failed to address many of the basic needs of society, and accumulated blame for all of people’s woes. Striving to give the various spheres of social life their own organization and dynamics to meet the needs of society independently, so that the political or administrative system plays only an indirect regulatory role, is an effective way to overcome this issue.3
For this structure to be realized, to enable the various spheres of social life to form a self-organizing system, there must be a prerequisite decoupling of these specific and cumbersome spheres of activity from political activity. Commodification is the catalyst for this transformative process. The problems of housing, food, transportation, employment, and education are the basic problems that plague every society. Many governments are plagued by these issues from which they cannot escape. They can neither advance nor retreat. The high degree of commodification has led to a distinctive structure in the domain of American society.
We can see how commodification creates these self-organizing systems and how they operate:
- Housing is a headache in many developing countries. The governments of some developing countries have worked hard to make “home ownership” a reality. But in the United States, the housing problem has been relatively well dealt with. Although the streets of big cities are full of homeless people wandering around, most people have spacious housing. That each family has a detached home is the norm. Many houses, with seven or eight rooms, are actually occupied by only one or two people. New housing is constantly being built. Housing is completely commodified. Everyone who wants their own house, or wants to rent one, has to pay for it. Real estate becomes an important pillar in the economy, regulated by economic levers. In different areas, prices vary. What you can buy for about $100,000 in a small central city, you may not be able to buy for $200,000 in San Francisco or New York. A house that might cost $400-$500 to rent in Manhattan, New York, might only cost $200-$300 in a smaller town.4 The housing industry has an incentive to build homes because of the lucrative nature of property subject to commodification. Over the years, housing has accumulated and more and more has been built. What the government did was to regulate these activities through laws, without directly creating housing, allocating housing, or maintaining housing. The government expands very little energy in housing the poor.
- Food is another problem that plagues many countries today, some of which have not even solved the basic problem of subsistence. Some countries have passed this hurdle, but are far from meeting the needs of society in terms of the availability and variety of non-staple foods. The government is exhausted by these conflicts and shortages of goods. But in the United States, the abundance and variety of food is amazing, even decadent. The system of supplying food is completely commodified. As producers, people produce what the market wants, and then the market system sells it to consumers. In the process, the producer, the seller, and all other parts of the system receive a profit. Commodification brings profit, which is the principle motivation. Of course, commodification cannot solve all problems, and the full development of science, technology, and means of production is also an indispensable factor.
- Transportation is a challenge that any modern society is bound to face. Human development, economic development, cultural development, and social development all mean increased mobility. If this mobility is not provided, society will be under incredible stress, and the political, economic and cultural development of society will be hindered. The problem of transportation is an issue what many countries find difficult. Within America transportation is mostly commodified. Air traffic, which is handled by private airlines, such as United, Delta, Northwest, TWA, etc., is a completely self-sustaining enterprise. The development of the airline industry is a major contributor to economic development. In land transportation, the famous bus company “Greyhound,” connects all four corners of the country. And so on. Commodification stimulates people to go into business, and in order to make a profit and increase it, businesses have to find ways to improve their services and expand their range.
- Employment, a major logistical problem of modern society: on the one hand, the development of science and technology is crowding more and more people out of the economy, and on the other hand, more and more people need to find work and earn a living. In this society, labor is a commodity. The government does not directly place people in jobs; it directs employment and creates jobs through the political system. Every business can hire its own people, and everyone can go to any business to find a job. In practice, of course, this does not mean that everyone who wants a particular job will find it; however, where commodification is highly developed, it is not the nature of the job that matters, but the exchange value received. With the right pay, people will be willing to exchange their labour. With money, they can then enter a commodified society and get anything they desire. After commodification, employment is not specifically managed by the government, but by private companies and individuals coordinating among themselves.
The development of the commodity economy has led to a dual structure of governance in society: a self-organized system which is responsible for all kinds of specific matters, and the political system is responsible for coordinating the various self-organized systems. This represents a major characteristic of macro-management in this society. These are just a few examples, and it should not be assumed that commodification necessarily makes things perfect, it simply means that commodification offers the possibility of making the government’s burden lighter. It is impossible for government to function efficiently if it is involved in every aspect of society. Once government is freed from these burdens, it still has to regulate activities in various fields, only now it has changed from direct to indirect control.
Commodification has the amazing power to push people anywhere profit can be found. The most typical examples being Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hamburgers, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Crest Toothpaste, Marlboro Cigarettes, United Parcel Post, etc. which are everywhere, even in the most remote places. One could say that wherever there is a dollar to be made somewhere, people will deliver goods and services there. Commodification not only promotes the circulation of goods to a considerable geographic extent, contributing to balanced societal development, but also drives commodity diversification to undeveloped areas. This is the case both for basic goods and services as well as for high technology.
Everything has a duality, and the decadence of high commodification is everywhere. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law may all become the targets of commodification. The pornographic culture of 42nd Street in New York is likely one such product of commodification. Commodification corrupts society in many ways, and has led to a number of serious social problems. These problems, in turn, will increase the pressure on the political and administrative system.
Therefore, commodification can reduce the burden of the political and administrative system, but there are two important prerequisites: political and administrative systems must regulate commodification. The real essence of commodification is not that everything becomes a commodity, but that the commodity is in a rational mechanism of operation. Economic leverage is what coordinates this mechanism, and so must the political and administrative systems. When many basic areas of society become self-organizing systems, political and administrative systems will be in a position to separate from them, to move from direct management to indirect management. The process of commodification is the process by which these spheres becoming self-organized systems. This process does not take shape in a short time, and even after a considerable period of development, contradictions, conflicts, obstacles and confusion are still inevitable. However, the political and administrative system will be more powerful and effective at managing dozens of large self-organized systems than managing thousands of specific activities.
1 “花花世界”
2 In Karl Marx’s critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods. Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade.
3 These criticisms should be read in context of the reforms made during the first years Deng Xiaoping era. The first and perhaps most famous of these was the household responsibility system. After the formation of agricultural communes in the 1950s, the central government bought agricultural produce from the communes at low prices but did not allow communes or the farmers in them to sell the surplus. With no incentive to produce anything beyond the quota, local workers only bothered to produce what was assigned to them. By the 1980s, peasants were given drastically reduced quotas and then allowed to sell their surplus at local markets for a profit. According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, the per-capita income of rural residents had increased five-fold between 1978 and 1988, and the output of grains increased by almost a third in the same period. The story goes that this policy was inspired by a group of farmers in the more impoverished province of Anhui, who had begun to ignore the quotas and swore an oath to feed each others’ families if one of them was arrested.
4 As of 2023 housing costs have risen dramatically, with the medium monthly cost of renting a house in Manhattan sitting at $4,768 and the medium cost of purchasing a home being over 1.5 million dollars USD. At the time of publication, the rate of homeownership in the U.S. has dropped to the lowest point since 1965 (63% in 2017), while the rate of homeownership in China currently stands around 90% according to statistics from the National Institutes of Health.