Okay, yes, I'm posting a lot today, but this is just creepy.
This selection comes from a discussion of the transition from the kind of exchange of commodities that existed under feudalism to the market as we currently know it:
The Market [sic] as the basic organizing principle of society had its historical origin in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It is what today's economists blandly refer to at the "factors market." Its creation required the transformation of nature into land, life into labor, and patrimony into capital. This was for Polayni "the great transformation"--the conversion of the means of production (not just their products) into commodities to be allocated by the market--or in this case, the Market. Land was abstracted from the totality of the natural world and treated as an exchangeable commodity. Work time or labor was abstracted out of life and treated as a commodity to be valued and exchanged according to supply and demand. Capital was abstracted out of social inheritance, no longer to be treated as a collective patrimony, but as an exchangeable source of unearned income for individuals.
--Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good
I don't know about you guys, but I've never heard anyone make feudalism sound quite so good.
The Market [sic] as the basic organizing principle of society had its historical origin in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It is what today's economists blandly refer to at the "factors market." Its creation required the transformation of nature into land, life into labor, and patrimony into capital. This was for Polayni "the great transformation"--the conversion of the means of production (not just their products) into commodities to be allocated by the market--or in this case, the Market. Land was abstracted from the totality of the natural world and treated as an exchangeable commodity. Work time or labor was abstracted out of life and treated as a commodity to be valued and exchanged according to supply and demand. Capital was abstracted out of social inheritance, no longer to be treated as a collective patrimony, but as an exchangeable source of unearned income for individuals.
--Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good
I don't know about you guys, but I've never heard anyone make feudalism sound quite so good.