Labour as a (fictitious) commodity: Polanyi and the capitalist 'market economy'.

Paton, Joy

Introduction

Karl Polanyi is well known for his critical engagement with the historical and institutional development of the capitalist economy, especially as this was shaped by the 'free market' mantra of nineteenth century laissez faire. He challenged orthodox conceptions of the 'market economy' and their concomitant approach to labour, declaring that labour's commodity status was 'fictitious'; being both necessary for a self-regulating market-system, yet unsustainable within such a system. The presumption that labour could be treated as a commodity to be regulated by market forces was given intellectual support by developments in economic theory. The neoclassical conception of 'the economy' as 'market, especially 'free market', implied a form of self-regulation that need not, indeed should not, be impeded by social and political processes. However, Polanyi's historical and anthropological work demonstrated that the commodification of labour is the Achilles' heel' in this laissez faire logic.

Polanyi first mounted his critique of laissez faire in The Great Transformation (1944) where he pointed to the problems associated with regulating labour by the processes of market supply and demand alone. The architects of the nineteenth century 'self-regulating' market system had imagined and required that all domestic production inputs, including 'land, labour and money', should be available for purchase in markets and thereby regulated according to the forces of supply and demand (Polanyi 2001: 71). Only with inputs and outputs circulating freely in markets adjusted by the price mechanism could the utopian vision of an equilibrating international economy be made manifest. This 'experiment' was unsustainable from Polanyi's perspective because it neglected the social and ecological character of economic processes. The novelty of the nineteenth-century system led Polanyi to reject the idealist construction of the market as a universal model of economy. Thereafter, his conceptual concerns became more pre-occupied with the methodological underpinnings of economic theory and its limitations for understanding economies historically and comparatively.

In countering what he understood as a bias in the use of formal economic theory toward universalising 'the market shape of things', Polanyi sought to develop an alternative universal foundation for understanding 'the place occupied by the economy in human society' (Polanyi 1977: xl). This concern is manifest in Polanyi's later works, especially Trade and Market in the Early Empires (1957) and Livelihood of Man (1977) where the concrete preoccupations of The Great Transformation gave way to an abstract model that could be generalised across the diversity of empirical economies. Polanyi (1957: 250) defined this model of 'substantive' economy as 'the interaction between man and his surroundings ... [and] ... the institutionalisation of that process'. It was based on the idea that the systematic process of 'material provisioning'--the 'ordered advance of all material means towards the consumption stage of livelihood' (Polanyi 1977: 32; 1957: 248)--was a pre-requisite for social reproduction in the context of even a relatively simple division of labour. Hence, in bringing order to 'production and distribution processes', all societies will have integrating institutions, albeit in diverse forms, that compel and drive the economic process (Polanyi 1944: 47). (1)

The substantive model of economy expressed more systematically Polanyi's earlier intimation that the economy is embedded in social institutions rather than the idealist impersonal market mechanism of neoclassical theory. However, intellectual engagement with Polanyi often emphasises The Great Transformation while neglecting his efforts to more fully develop a critical construction of its ideas over the course of his life's work. (2) The distinctive non-capitalist focus of his later research may partly explain such tendencies. This is not to say that the later works were inconsequential; quite the contrary. They had a very significant impact, especially in the field of economic anthropology. As Dalton (1990: 251) points out, Polanyi's 'substantivism' rivalled the neoclassical and Marxian frameworks as 'dominant paradigms' in that discipline. Yet there has been a tendency to view Polanyi's oeuvre as being characterised by two relatively distinct preoccupations--the historical rise and fall of nineteenth century 'market society' (self-regulation) on the one hand, and the methodological underpinnings of comparative economic systems (economic anthropology) on the other (Stanfield 1980: 594). Nevertheless, through the concept of the fictitious commodities, a reconciliation of these concerns is possible (cf Dalton 1990).

Viewing capitalism though the prism of substantivism invites us to think differently about what the economy actually is--whether it is the arena of price-making markets adjusting to equilibrium under the forces of supply and demand; or the process of provisioning societies. This paper brings Polanyi's 'anthropological lens' to bear on capitalism, highlighting the analytical importance of the 'fictitious commodity' concept in understanding the 'economy' in a capitalist context. The paper emphasises two related themes. The first was Polanyi's critique of the neoclassical conception of 'the economy' as an ideal (market) construct which gave rise to the notion that labour could be regulated by the forces of supply and demand. The second was the lack of logic in the notion of a 'self regulating' market and Polanyi's appreciation of the concrete tendencies of capitalist economy's to develop institutional arrangements that ensure the economy is always, and necessarily, more than 'the market'.

In taking up these themes, it is argued that the 'fictitious commodity' concept highlights a structural contradiction stemming from the tension between concrete reality and the idealist construction of the economy in neoclassical theory. This contradiction directly challenges the idea that, in capitalism, the state is 'outside' the market and that market instruments are the most 'efficient' means for regulating the production and distribution of commodities. On the contrary, the commodification of labour generates a systemic requirement for extra-market regulation if the market-system is to be made compatible with the on-going reproduction of society. However, as the concept of the 'double movement' shows, the nature of these 'protections' is contingent; they need not lead to 'progressive' labour institutions. This is the case today in the context of 'neoliberalism, just as it was in the nineteenth century's so-called 'age of laissez faire'.

The Rise of Markets and the 'Self-Regulating' Experiment

With the historical rise of markets and commodity production came a privileging of exchange relations. However, under the rubric of laissez faire, and supported by developments in economic theory, this 'transformation' was extended beyond the realm of commodities to human labour and the natural environment. Polanyi (1957: 255) identified the dominant institutional form of integration with 'the degree to which it comprises land and labour in society'. Hence the key to the emergence of 'market society' was the process by which the productive forces became commodified. The rise of the market as a 'ruling force' could be traced, Polanyi (1977: 43) argued, 'by noting the extent to which land and food were mobilised through exchange and labour was turned into a commodity to be purchased in the market'.

During the rise of English supremacy, from agrarian to early industrial capitalism, markets were still an 'accessory feature' of an institutional landscape subjected to social control and regulation (Polanyi 2001: 70). The mercantile regime continued to mobilise labour through law and custom under the dictates of a 'moral economy' (Thompson 1971), while markets were generally restricted 'to commodities in the proper sense of the term' (Polanyi 1947: 62). Exchange was not yet the dominant form of institutional integration. Embedded in non-economic institutions, the dictates of tradition continued to exert their influence on labour through to the industrial revolution (Polanyi 1947: 62; 2001: 73). With the spread of factory manufacture as industrialisation gathered pace, the transition to a market-exchange system of economic integration was made complete with the commodification of labour and its incorporation into that system. However, there was no inevitability that labour would be organised and regulated by markets. This was neither a logical or material necessity. Rather, it was the outcome of historical contest.

Polanyi (2001: 145-46) argued that the creation of markets in labour and the establishment of laissez-faire 'could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course'. An active debate about, and resistance to, a 'free labour market' was evident from the late eighteenth century and in 1817 the laissez faire position was supported by the reprinting of Joseph Townsend's (1971 [1786]) influential Dissertation on the Poor Laws (Oxley 1974; Polanyi 2001: 74). At its core was a 'naturalism' that conflated Adam Smith's (1776) 'system of natural liberty'--an artefact of 'man's' nature--with 'Nature' as god-given. The poor were understood as 'beasts' (Polanyi 2001: 119) to be regulated by hunger which, Townsend (1971: 36) argued, would 'tame the fiercest animals ... [and] teach decency and civility, obedience and subjection'. The growing presence of able-bodied paupers and indigent labour in need of poor relief on the one hand, was seen as a threat to social order, but on the other, also represented a potential pool of labour to meet the fluctuating demands of industrial capitalism.

The historical proponents of laissez faire argued that, as an instrument of 'Nature', markets should determine 'success and failure, wealth and poverty' (Porter 2000: 380-81; Dean 1991: 69). They argued that the poor laws (once a solution to the tensions thrown up by the development of agrarian capitalism) merely removed the equilibrating force of hunger. Being 'the most natural motive to industry and labour' (Townsend 1971: 37), hunger was deemed to be a more efficient mechanism than legislation; 'a better disciplinarian than the magistrate' (Polanyi 2001: 120). It was asserted that because the 'laws of commerce were the laws of nature and consequently the laws of God, the market should govern the poor and labour should be treated as a commodity finding its price without the impediment of legal safeguards (Polanyi 2001: 122). The parliamentary reforms of 1832, which enhanced the power of the manufacturing classes, paved the way for creation of a labour market with the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 (Polanyi 2001: 143).

Subsequently, the idea of a 'self-regulating market-system' became the central tenet of laissez faire economy. The latter was a 'militant creed' in service of a 'utopian society' integrated through market self-regulation (Polanyi 2001: 143). Creating a labour market was the vital, if 'repugnant' (Dow 2006: 137), step in establishing a 'market economy' where the processes of provisioning could be 'controlled, regulated, and directed by market prices', in this way entrusting 'order in the production and distribution of goods' to a 'self-regulating price mechanism' (Polanyi 2001: 71). As Polanyi (2001: 145-46) points out though, 'the road to the free market was opened and kept opened by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism. The result was to make exchange the dominant form of institutional integration by subjecting all factors of production, including labour, to market logic. In this context, social provisioning is 'incidental' to private 'economic' motives, and is ensured 'only so long as individuals have a reason to indulge in the activity of 'earning an income' whether wages, rent, interest or profit (Polanyi 1947: 64). Competition compels the investment of capital for profit while the threat of starvation compels workers to offer their labour for wages.

Yet, these institutionally driven motives were not reflected in the neoclassical representation of labour as a commodity. Based on a conception of the economy taken to its extreme--the market as ideal construct--neoclassical theory presumes that markets, including labour markets, have an equilibrium price at which such markets will clear. Under competitive conditions with full mobility of 'factors', a self-regulating system seemed to offer an elegant resolution to the ups and downs of demand associated with industrial production. 'Packaged and priced' as it were, labour could be 'moved' through the economic process according to the forces of supply and demand. Just like any other commodity, full flexibility in the price of labour would ensure equilibrium with no idle resources and thus, no involuntary unemployment. For Polanyi (1977: 19), the formalist method underpinning such neoclassical reasoning had 'nothing in common' with the substantive (institutional) method. Whereas the former derived from 'logic, the latter derived from 'fact', emerging out of the human need for a sustaining physical environment (Polanyi 1957: 243).

Nevertheless, capitalist production is 'commodity' production geared toward markets rather than production for immediate personal consumption. Market exchange therefore plays a pivotal role in the economic process which is mediated 'at a distance' (Foucault 1991) through an anonymous market system rather than being linked directly to personal needs. However, while the market dominates economic integration (because the productive forces are organised through exchange), it is not independent of non-market institutions in doing so. Market exchange is not the only, or necessarily most important, aspect of the provisioning process. Polanyi was highly critical of the formalism characterising neoclassical economics because of its obfuscatory effect on understanding the concrete economic process. However, he did not reject neoclassical theory per se; rather his critique was one that sought to highlight the specificity of neoclassical reasoning. Indeed, Polanyi (1971: 21) accepted the 'approximation' of the 'market-system' in capitalism as a self-regulating mechanism, encouraging critics not to challenge economic theorists on their modelling of its logic and laws of motion but instead to engage with its limited parameters.

Polanyi clearly admired the 'discovery' of price theory articulated by Carl Menger (1871) and others. However, the neoclassical concern with individual allocation under conditions of scarcity gives a universal status to market exchange while neglecting the specific (capitalist) form of commodity-based production to which it is attached. Following Menger's own reservations, Polanyi was adamant that the neo-classical theory of price was insufficient for understanding the economy in other societies and cultures and, by extension, the substantive capitalist economy. (3) Neoclassical theory was 'not the most general theory' because the system of provisioning is a broader social phenomenon than is constituted in market exchange alone (Polanyi 1971: 21). Where neoclassical theory subsumes the economy within the market, the notion of a substantive economy effectively reverses this logic. Thus, market exchange becomes one element in a larger (economic) process that is supported by the presence of other institutions such as the state and household.

These observations about the history and structure of capitalism give analytical significance to Polanyi's argument that the commodity status of labour is 'fictitious' (Polanyi 2001: 71). Polanyi pointed out that because labour's substance is 'no other' than 'man' who is 'not produced' for sale, it cannot be considered a true commodity (Polanyi 2001: 75; 1947: 61). Indeed, labour is brought into being and exists quite independently of any particular economic system. It therefore has a dual character. Labour embodies purpose and value extraneous to the market, yet it is also a crucial element in an economic process integrated through a commodity exchange system. As Polanyi (1944: 73) explained, markets for labour 'are essential to a market economy' because self-regulation requires that production inputs also be in the commodity form. However, motivated by the 'satanic mills' of the factory system, Polanyi (2001: 35; 1944: 73) argued that 'no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions ... unless its human ... substance ... was protected'.

The conceptualisation of labour as a commodity can be understood as 'crude' because it utilises an abstraction that has no material basis. As first introduced by Marx, it is 'labour power' that constitutes the commodity being bought and sold. This implies that labour can be treated as a purely 'economic' (market) category. However, as feminists have long argued, labour is embodied. The abstract distinction between labour and labour power does not transcend the material effects of commodification (Pateman 1988: 150). Labour power cannot be separated from the labouring body. The capacity to do useful work is not materially distinct from the body that exercises such capacity. Labour power cannot

be left on a shelf awaiting demand for it to surge. Without an income, its 'vessel' (the labouring body) has no means of survival or reproduction. And, surely, this is the very raison d'etre of substantive economy.

The (Il)logic of Self-Regulation and the Survival of Society

Polanyi's challenge to laissez faire however, is more than a moral claim about the need to protect workers by virtue of their 'humanity'. The embodied character of labour is significant because it signals labour's complex relation to the substantive capitalist economy and the unique institutional arrangements necessary for a 'market economy'. Labour is not produced by virtue of market imperatives as are true commodities, yet the market-system is dependent upon it, both as producer and consumer. As an input to the production process (labour power), supply must be secured; as a consumer of production output (labouring body), its properties must be safeguarded. The presence of extra-market institutions, such as the state and household, is necessary to sustain the integrity of this dual function.

The state upholds the specific social-property relations that create labour's dependence on commodity markets for subsistence needs. Hence labour is compelled to 'supply' rather than being called forth by 'demand' as implied in neoclassical theory. The necessary legal accompaniments stemming from labour's embodiment include minimum wage legislation, restrictions on the length of the working day and so forth. The state also appropriates and redistributes taxes for the purpose of securing the conditions necessary for social reproduction, including support for the unemployed. Similarly, the household redistributes resources amongst the family for the reproduction of its non-waged members. From the substantive perspective, these institutions of redistribution are as necessary to the integration of capitalist economies as the institutions of exchange. The necessary presence of such institutions ensures that the economy is always more than 'the market'. Without them, the nineteenth century 'self-regulating' market utopia would have resulted 'in the demolition of society' (Polanyi 1944: 69-73; 1947: 59).

In this claim, Polanyi was effectively arguing that the commodification of factor inputs and their regulation by the price-mechanism was not a sustainable basis upon which to reproduce a substantive economy. It is one thing to have markets in labour, quite another to subject labour to regulation by the price mechanism alone. This is tantamount to severing the links to its social and biological substance. As a means for integrating the processes of social provisioning upon which the reproduction of social existence depends, the persistence of self-regulation with regard to labour jeopardised the very conditions necessary for that reproduction (Polanyi 1944: 73). In the case of labour, the process of commodification cannot be absolute--labour cannot be invested with economic status only; to do so is unsustainable. The dual character of labour requires more pro-active government than is necessary for the realm of actual commodities because labour's 'integrity' is fragile. The presence of regulatory frameworks to secure the supply of labour reflects its 'incomplete commodification' (Radin 1996: 109).

Polanyi's critique goes to the core of neoclassical economics and its claims about equilibrium prices and self-regulation. The imperative for non-market institutions at the centre of the substantive economic process means that markets in labour cannot be 'self-regulating' in the neoclassical sense. It is on this basis that Polanyi (1957: 250) argues the economy is 'embedded and enmeshed in institutions, economic and non-economic' and, further, that cultural or governmental institutions may be just as central to the structure and performance of the substantive economy as 'monetary institutions or the availability of tools and machines'. Yet, if such is the case, the price-making market system more broadly cannot be a self-regulating mechanism as the advocates of nineteenth century laissez-faire proposed. This contradiction renders the 'self-regulating' market utopia 'obsolete' (Polanyi 1944: 69-73; 1947: 59).

Historically, the emergent 'consciousness' of this unsustainability was reflected in what Polanyi (2001: 79) called the 'double movement'. The iterative and dialectic process implied in this concept captures the structural contradiction inherent in the incorporation of labour as a commodity in a self-regulating market-system. Polanyi noted that the intentional program of social engineering geared to the integration of labour into such a system gave rise to a spontaneous and pragmatic protective countermovement that, in the interest of 'society', obstructed 'the free working of such an economy' (Polanyi 1944: 143). He understood this as constituting a pragmatic response from citizens against the 'organised' political imposition of a self-regulating market system. The result was that the forces enabling market liberalisation (free labour market) were accompanied by forces constraining it (ten-hour working day). In this way, expansion in the organisation of markets for 'genuine commodities' correlated with institutional restrictions that tempered the effect on 'fictitious ones' (Polanyi 2001: 79). This was a reaction to the degrading effects on the human substance that is both ends and means of such a system (Polanyi 2001: 138, 147).

Hence, contra the arguments of laissez faire, rather than reducing the need for 'control, regulation, and intervention, the introduction of free markets, 'enormously increased their range' (Polanyi 2001: 147). The structural imperative for regulation invoked by the commodity fiction directly challenges the laissez faire notion that the state is 'outside' the market; indeed, it is 'inside' one of the most important economic institutions in capitalism (Block 2001: xxix). The notional 'separation' of state and market is untenable from the substantive perspective where the 'economic' is conceived as a process of provisioning that links 'man . nature and his fellows' (Polanyi 1957: 243). Also challenged is the neoclassical edifice and its central proposition that market instruments, rather than state regulation, are the most 'efficient' means for allocating resources, be they factor inputs or consumption goods.

There is a systemic requirement for labour regulations and protections if market exchange is to be effective as a form of economic integration giving integrity to the process of material provisioning and securing the conditions for social reproduction. However, as Polanyi astutely observed, such 'countermeasures' need not be 'liberal-democratic' in nature. For Polanyi, (2001: 245) Roosevelt's 'new deal' was one response to the fall-out from international 'self-regulation', but so too was fascism in Europe. There are manifest variations in the way that labour 'protections' are institutionalised. As Peck (1996: 42) expresses it, labour is subject to 'regulatory necessity but institutional indeterminacy'. As always, the issue remains in whose interests such regulations are enacted. This is especially relevant in the current climate where 'neoliberalism' has been declared 'dead' yet the hopes for progressive reform are yet to manifest in practice. Through Polanyi we are reminded to remain sceptical of claims about market efficiency and to be vigilant in pursuit of measures for the de-commodification of labour which stem from social, as much as individual, imperatives.

Concluding Remarks

Historically, the change from a system of regulated markets to a self-regulating market system ushered in a transformation in the structures for material provisioning and social reproduction. However, the integration of the economic process in this way was not unproblematic and its culmination in the nineteenth century 'utopian experiment' with laissez-faire is revealing of the unique structure of industrial capitalism as well as the limitations of its key institution (Polanyi 1944: 73, 141). Through the model of substantive economy developed in Polanyi's mature works, the concept of fictitious commodities first raised in The Great Transformation takes on analytical significance, highlighting the structural contradiction at the core of the self-regulating market.

In practice, a 'self-regulating' market-exchange system is unable to reproduce itself in the absence of redistributive institutions such as the state and household. An institutional matrix beyond 'the market' is required to secure and 'protect' the social conditions necessary for the market to function as the 'dominant' form of integration under capitalism. There can be no absolute demarcation between the economic and the political in this substantive sense. Labour necessarily remains embedded in non-economic institutions and subject to 'extra-market' forms of regulation. In capitalism, the movement of economic processes is propelled only partially by exchange. Redistribution, supported structurally by the state and household, is also an important aspect of economic institutionalisation. Without it, market-exchange is an 'unsuccessful' attempt at social and economic integration (Polanyi 2001: 35). This situation reveals the lack of logic in the notion of an unregulated market.

Through the related concept of the double movement, Polanyi also demonstrates a clear appreciation of the tendency in capitalism for economic processes to be organised in such a way as to develop institutional arrangements that ensure the economy constitutes more than 'the market. The substantive framework, based on Polanyi's observation of the diverse institutional forms that have integrated economic processes in different historical and cultural contexts, gives substance to this as it also serves to challenge our fundamental understanding of what an 'economy' actually is. It highlights the inadequacies and limited applicability of the ideal market construct articulated within neoclassical economics. The Polanyian world view, on the other hand makes for a richer understanding of the constitution and dynamics of 'the economy'.

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Joy Paton, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney

Notes

(1.) Polanyi identified three main forms of economic integration--reciprocity between symmetrical groups, redistribution through an allocative centre, and exchange in a market-system. One or more forms may be present in any particular economic system, but for Polanyi, the dominant pattern was that which organised the productive forces.

(2.) In the preface to Livelihood (1977) (a posthumous publication) Polanyi stated that the book was intended to complete the project begun in The Great Transformation (1944).

(3.) According to Polanyi, Menger himself believed that price theory lacked explanatory power and did not have the capacity to answer all of the questions put to it. As a result he did not allow his Principles of Economics (1871) to be reprinted as he worked on a more general theory that was eventually published posthumously in 1923 as a second edition. This was not well received by economists who thought a general theory was unnecessary in order to understand economic activity, believing the price mechanism and its articulation in the marginal theory of utility 'could explain everything' (Polanyi 1971: 21). Menger's second edition remained untranslated and neglected as a result.

>> Dr Joy Paton is from the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. She can be contacted at joy.paton@sydney.edu.au.