The Commodification of Personhood: Retrieving Critical Ethical Economy

Abstract

The commodification of personhood is a significant issue in modern society, extending from the pricing of labour to commercialising sex. Extending the domain of markets raises analytical issues and moral dilemmas for households and legislators pursuing ethical integrity. It is important for economic thought to contribute to resolving issues and dilemmas. After reviewing the context of commodifying personhood (Chapter 1), the next three chapters typify diverse relations between economics and ethics to address commodification. The Chicago School of Economics represents an orthodox influence on public policy, the positivism that veils norms and recommends universal commodification (Chapter 2). Aquinas’ Aristotelianism exemplifies economics as a branch of ethics at the service of politics while acknowledging a distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning (Chapter 3). Commons’ economics signifies a heterodox attempt to draw on ethics to inform public policy (Chapter 4). These principal methods provide conflicting guidance as to how ethics relates to economics. Applying these methods to the commodification of personhood reveals internal incoherencies and external inconsistencies in these approaches. Weaknesses in the principal methods present an opportunity to retrieve a critical ethical economy by creatively completing Commons’ economics. The first task is to remedy internal incoherencies and external inconsistencies in his method to develop the principles of a critical ethical economy (Chapter 5). Maritain’s civic friendship replaces production as the ethic of the state proper, breaking the nexus between income and market values of resources (Chapter 6) and providing the context for a critical ethical description of the firm, managers, and work (Chapter 7). Employment is fundamental to personal self-realisation, so Chapter 8 makes recommendations to guarantee a living wage for each household via an employer of last resort scheme. A guaranteed living wage delivers the institutional environment to remediate governance of morally contested commodities, notably commercialised sex (Chapter 9). This thesis concludes that the positive-normative distinction that directed the evolution of economic ideas can be bridged without compromising the substance of these distinct fields of study.