"Period Of Perilous Transformation": Labour And Land Commodities And The Environmental Crisis

This paper uses the critical apparatus developed by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation to identify the ways in which the treatment of both labour and land as commodities have negative effects on society and the natural environment. Commodified labour is identified as coercive, non-democratic and anti-social, and disembedded from the society in which the labourer and the firm is situated. Similarly, the commodity status of land encourages the ignoring of the specific environmental and social context of that land. In contrast to the commodity, the non-commodity brings with it many and specific social responsibilities and many society members have access to it; it does not stay in the possession of one society member for long. Despite the ubiquity of labour and land commodities, efforts to decommodify both labour and land spring up spontaneously in many places. The examination of decommodified labour reveals that the commonly held beliefs about work – that it is a disutility that people undertake only for gain, and that the optimal organization form is a top-down hierarchy - turn out to be erroneous. Similarly, ownership of land tends to result in its degradation and the degradation of other parcels, while simultaneously fragmenting and degrading human society. This paper suggests Universal Basic Income at just above subsistence level as a way to decommodify labour to realize social benefits such as emphasis on the work rather than the wage, work becomes voluntary not coerced, varied and democratic, and environmental benefits from the elimination of environmentally harmful industries. Community Land Trusts based on Transition Towns are suggested to decommodify land, environmental benefits being realized through democratic land use decision making and community self-provisioning and sustainability projects on the Transition Town model.