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just as much tied to the emergence of capitalism as they are products of this
emergence (Wolf, 1982).
Even still, conceptualising commodifi cation serves as an invitation to consider
what differences, if any, characterise the development of a system of generalised
commodity production and circulation in a capitalist political economy. Many
scholars
have
chosen to make this distinction, though not all for the same reason.
Marx, for instance, while recognising that commodities predate capitalism, also
theorised commodifi cation under capitalism as a switch from the mercantilist sale
of commodities to secure money to buy commodities (represented in the abstract
by C-M-C) towards the outlay of money as capital to produce commodities in order
to sell for more money-capital (M-C-M
). Marx argues that this represents an
important transition towards a more generalised system of commodity production
and exchange, one whose culmination is in many ways signifi ed by the commodifi -
cation of labour, or what he called labour-power.
Why mark this transition and the emergence of ostensibly commodifi ed labour,
particularly if our primary interest is in environmental geographies of commodifi ca-
tion? At one level, the commodifi cation of labour-power, that is, the development
of markets in labour and the emergence of large numbers of people (indeed the
majority in capitalist societies) who work for wages in order to secure their own
social reproduction (as well as to satisfy all manner of aspirations necessary and
otherwise) is pivotal to the
deepening
of commodifi cation mentioned above. This
is because the availability of people to work in a wider and wider range of com-
modity producing sectors is tied in turn to the economic demand created by these
same people who buy what they need (and want) to live. From this perspective,
it is hard to imagine the generalised character of commodifi cation, including the
commodifi cation of nature in various respects, without considering the character of
wage labour and the labourers themselves who comprise a primary, though by no
means sole market for commodities. Food provides an excellent example, since it
is only the existence of large numbers of people who cannot or do not produce their
own food that allows food to be produced primarily in the commodity-form. More-
over, as numerous scholars in the agrarian and food literatures have observed, the
shifting dynamics of labour markets over time (e.g., the entry of large numbers of
women into the labour force in industrialised countries since about the middle of
the 20th century) are tied directly to the commodifi cation of food (e.g., the increas-
ing sale of pre-cooked and pre-prepared meals) (Guthman, 2002).
5
This is in one
sense a specifi c example of a more fundamental connection between the commodi-
fi cation of labour-power through the emergence of wage labour, and the commodi-
fi cation of land in so much as the latter entails separation of labour from 'land'
broadly understood (Polanyi, 1944; Marx, 1977). However, these should not be
understood as stages in the prehistory of capitalism but rather as systemic tendencies
that continue to be manifest in a variety of guises (Kloppenburg, 2004; Glassman,
2006).
A second reason to mark the commodifi cation of labour-power and the histori-
cally and sociologically distinct character of M-C-M
′
- again particularly empha-
sised by Marx and many Marxist scholars - is that it is integral to an account of
the uniquely dynamic and growth oriented character of capitalist production and
capital accumulation on an ever-expanding scale. The extraction and reinvestment
of surplus (signifi ed by a positive difference between M
′
and M) fuels a restless drive
to reproduce and expand the scale and scope of commodifi cation via stretching and
′
