A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

Labour
Because it’s the source of the surplus value (profit) and accumulation,
labour is the good par excellence where exchange value has taken the
upper hand is labour 28 . We exist only as we exchange our labour in the
market. The subsumption of labour to capitalist needs has resulted in
exploitation (850m workers, or 28% of the total, are considered as
‘working poor’ 29 ), alienation, inhuman conditions or intolerable stress,
informal labour (between 52 and 78% in the South 30 ) or structural unemployment
(another 7% worldwide 31 ). Activities in function of reproduction,
mostly practised by women, are neither remunerated nor
esti mated.
The market
Capitalism didn’t invent the market. The market, locally but also on an
international level, existed many centuries before capitalism came into
being. Capitalism neither abolished the market, it simply used and transformed
it to its needs, and more specific to the strongest players of the
market. Capitalist market has nothing to do with free market, it’s a oligopolistic
and managed market. That means that in every sector a handful
of multinationals dominate the whole and – with the help of ‘their’
corporate states - they impose the rules: competition is eliminated when
it’s harmful for them and imposed when it is favourable. Capitalist corporations
themselves are all plan economies on a scale that exceeds
often that of countries.
So far the ‘real’ market, the market of commodities and services. The
predominance of exchange value over use value also affected and trans-
28 Dierckxsens W., The Limits of Capitalism, An approach to globalization without
neoliberalism, London 2000, p. 147.
29 ILO, Global Employment Trends January 2010, Geneva 2010, p. 54.
30 WTO & ILO, Globalization and informal jobs in developing countries, Geneva
2009, p. p. 27.
31 ILO, Global Employment Trends January 2010, p. 12.
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