One warm summer evening while enjoying wine on balcony in downtown Montreal, I found myself in an intense discussion of Marx's commodity fetishism with my significant other ... this article from BBC today could not be more on point.
Originally coined by Marx to describe (and mock) the western economic system, "commodity fetishism" is essential to the dominant ideology of capitalist societies, as it quantifies the value of each human's time and thus, each human.
To begin: because commodities are not valued based on their usefulness, but on their potential for exchange, people's labor itself becomes a "commodity" as it creates the "material commodity" for exchange [think of $$, the paper itself is not valuable, however, collective intentionality of people in the US has set the federal minimum wage for 1 hour of work at McDonald's = $7.25]. This means that our social relations are reduced to relations between different types of commodities leaving us in a society where "production has mastery over people" (Marx).
In the words of Karl from Das Kapital,
"A commodity is... a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour."
Marx's commentary in 1867 when he wrote Vol. 1 of Das Kapital used the example of 1 tonne iron = 2 ounces of gold in value. As always, evolution has moved us further in this realm... I just wonder what would dear Marx would say if he knew that 1 kidney of 17-year old male in Beijing = $3,392 or $2,509 + 1 new 64 gig iPad (prices for iPad in China taken from The Wall Street Journal).
Let's play:
# kidneys/ Chinese male = 2 (probably)
life expectancy of males in China = 75.5 years = 661,819 hours
Zheng's remaining life = 58.5 years = 512,800 hours
job requirements of average kidney: excretion of waste, secretion of hormones such as: erythropoietin, renin & calcitrol, and homeostasis of the human body including pH, osmoregulation & blood pressure.
residents of Beijing with kidney disease = 1.5 million
population of Beijing = 19,612,368
% population with kidney disease = 7.65% (bad statistic I realize, just roll with me)
and so... $3,392/512,800 hrs = $0.006615/hr
Little Zheng has approximately a 7.65% chance of developing renal disease and he sold his kidney into indentured servitude at a minimum wage of $0.00615/hr. This is assuming that he does not have high blood pressure or diabetes (among other things) because his chances of needing that kidney would increase drastically. On the other hand, it would take that dear kidney 15.2 years to make the money to buy an iPad.
Don't get me wrong- I'm all for donating organs. Clearly with 1.5 million people suffering from renal diseases in Beijing, the population needs all the kidneys they can get. However, I think most of you can agree there is something so wrong about exchanging an organ for apple's latest invention.
This leaves me to think: maybe Darwin got it all wrong?
Natural selection is in order... against human stupidity.
I could be studying renal for the biological section of my MCAT or I could be writing inane blog posts.
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