Globalisation as commodification

Abstract

While recognising that most pre-capitalist formations exhibited elements of commodity exchange, Marx argued that capitalism differentiates itself as a genuine commodity system by virtue of two interdependent processes having reached a critical stage of development: a 'stretching' of commodity relations to the point where production for the market displaces subsistence production as the primary form; and a 'deepening' of commodity relations such that these encompass not only goods and services but the capacities for producing them. This paper argues that globalisation can best be understood as the culminating stage of these stretching and deepening processes: the former in the sense that commodity relations now embrace the entire planet and the latter in the sense that they cover not merely goods, or the capacities for producing goods, but also every other type of capacity and every other type of outcome. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.