Satabdi Chakrabarti is a student of Physiology who writes with interests in pharmaceutical companies and the market in general.
It’s as if I learned a new word and now I suddenly hear it being used all over the place. I’ve obviously lived within the market and a capitalist society but lately I haven’t been able to stop asking myself whether “the market” and “exploitation” are mutually exclusive or if they go hand in hand. Perhaps, it’s because of recent economic issues but I’ve come to realize it’s true that either way, there’s no avoiding it- the market is everywhere and to live without it is basically to not live at all. I’m suddenly posed with the ultimatum of “get in or get out.” Even if I exclusively buy organic and go green, by virtue of the fact that I’m a U.S. citizen, I’m immersed in the U.S. capitalist market system so ultimately, I’m always “in”. But what would happen if I chose to be “out?”
I recently came upon an example within the story of “Bartleby” by Hermin Melville. “Bartleby” encompass the sentiment of living within the market and remarks on the isolation resulting from resigning from it.
Photo Taken by: Satabdi Chakrabarti (me!) December, 2008 on a trip to New York City.
Bartleby is Perfect Dead.
On a first reading, “Bartleby” seems abrupt and disconcerting. It seems almost as if you’re waiting for the plot to develop and suddenly, it ends and Bartleby is dead. The story takes place on Wall St. at a law office and Bartleby is hired as a scrivener to work alongside Turkey and Nippers who are both irrational workers. Turkey has a habit of drinking during his lunch break and because his habit, his productivity is never very high in the afternoons. Nippers is efficient, but picky. So Bartleby is quite the God-send. He quite literally has “no preference” in terms of his work and does exactly what he’s told- which especially in a capitalist system is ideal.
The irony of the story is that Bartleby has no life outside his office. He has no family and quite literally lives at work. It’s eerie, but he is getting more work done than both Turkey and Nippers put together so the boss doesn’t mind. This leads to him resigning completely from his work. Instead of having no preference, he “prefers not to [work].” He becomes lifeless and soon after…well…he dies.
When it comes down to it, it’s all about the “value” we place on things. Bartleby is just an example of the value society puts on labor. Labor became a commodity due to this high value within society and therefore a competitive market was established for labor. Bartleby was the most competitive in comparison to Turkey and Nippers and so he became the more worthy commodity. And that is where exploitation starts- when human labor and life can be commodified. This is precisely what we have come to in our society. The catch is, however, there is no way to prevent exploitation of human commodities because, whether we like it or not, the market is the basis of our society and resigning from the market is resigning from society.
“All People Are Created Equal”
It’s unfortunate, but even if all people are created equal, all people are not treated as such. The commodification of human life has led to an uneven value of people can easily result. The more money a person has, the more valuable they are so it’s easy to neglect and take advantage of those who aren’t as affluent because they are “worth less.” The scale of this dynamic isn’t just limited to individual persons, but spans across relationships with corporations and countries as well.
A great film on this subject is The Constant Gardener. The movie’s premise is uncovering the corruption within a pharmaceutical company which distributes medicine while simultaneously testing AIDS and tuberculosis drugs on the general population of a Kenyan city. The people within the city are virtually lab rats for this pharmaceutical company because there is such a high rate of the diseases within the population and therefore a lot of desperation for medication…because of intense poverty…and because they lack an adequate healthcare system. Though my brief synopsis is hardly giving this film the credit it deserves, I can assure you that the truth that is unraveled will surprise you and will leave you thinking, “what really is going on in the world?”
It’s not just pharmaceutical companies that are using human lives for their benefit, many corporations are. The bitter realization that I’ve come to is that despite these types of occurances, the market will ultimately never change when the power lies in the hands of those commodifying lives. It’s difficult to say whether a change will actually ever occur, especially when we’ve come to the point in history where we are incorporated into the market, not that the market is incorporated into society -and when isolating ourselves from it would serve no purpose except detriment to ourselves.
05/20 at 4:56 pm
I’m not sure I can agree with you apparent view that commodification of lives is bad, and I know I cannot agree that we’ve just recently come to a point in history when such a thing occurs. You express your point very well, I just don’t feel the evidence in the real world supports it.
Anyone who has ever had a job essentially commodified themselves for at least that period. Anytime people wear make-up or dress up, they are commodifying themselves by trying to be something society places value on. True, those examples are nowhere near as extreme as what was done in The Constant Gardener or Bartleby, but they help show that commodification of beings does not necessarily have to be a horrible thing. It’s true, it does assign value to human lives. However, it also gives people something to work towards. Commodification comes from society’s preferences, and those act as benchmarks of sorts. Without knowing what was viewed as good, people’s lives would be comparatively aimless. Now, I’m not saying that society’s preferences are correct, but I think we can all accept that no one person can change what an entire culture or world prefers, so the best we can do is use them to give ourselves purpose or goals.
In response to your last paragraph or so, as far as history goes, I don’t mean to offend anyone, but the world’s “oldest profession” (prostitution) is clearly an example of commodification of lives, so this is nothing new.
05/21 at 10:15 am
Actually, I didn’t mean to come across as saying that commodification of human lives is entirely bad.
My point is merely that in the processes of assigning value to human lives, we have come to a point where now exploitation (to an extremely large extent- like in the Constant Gardener) has started to be suddenly “okay.”
Your example of prostitution, though an excellent point, fails to see that this is a voluntary choice of the man or woman vs. in extreme cases such as in the Constant Gardener, a choice wasn’t even in the picture. In fact, people were denied treatment if they didn’t sign a consent form even though they were just being tested on like human lab rats.
Markets are necessary for a functioning society and are something that we have to be immersed in in order to avoid isolation, but at the same time markets aren’t without corruption. That corruption and exploitation isn’t necessary for the success of that market, however, since money is the primary focus, the more money the better no matter the means. That is the problem.
06/11 at 1:56 pm
I really appreciate the dilemma that you writing about in this blog post.
Lately (in the last two years or so), I’ve been thinking a lot about how a market mentality has impacted education. It’s everywhere: students evaluate their education much as they evaluate or rate their online purchases; university presidents reliant upon private funding for the bulk of their budgets pay homage to those private interests rather than directing education to the public good; college-level coursework is becoming less about creating a critical site for social dialogue, and more about preparing future workers, a instrumentality that use to distinguish trade colleges from liberal arts or university education; and overall, the antagonism that sets in through market competition feels as though it translates into everyone’s mode of operation — in the classroom, departments, schools, administration, and boardrooms. That last one is the hardest one for me and my day-to-day life at UW.
All this to say … your meditation on the inevitability of being implicated in a market logic fits to what I see happening to education.
Where I find a little bit of comfort is that classrooms can still be a place where critical awareness makes all the difference in how we see ourselves fitting into market culture, education, and (inevitably) employment, too.
Thanks for the food for thought!