Lakshmi once wove cane baskets at home and gave them to relatives at festivals. After a road linked her village to the town, she joined a packaging factory owned by a businessman. She now works fixed hours there and is paid every week; the machines, the materials and the boxes she makes belong to the owner. Her neighbour, a retired teacher, has begun giving tuition to village children for a monthly fee. An agent from a city hospital has also been visiting poor families, offering money to anyone willing to give a kidney to a rich patient. The village elders are divided over these changes.
Which of the following states Marx's view of the process that the village elders are divided over?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → The process of commodification has negative social effects.
Option (1) Commodification extends markets to goods but leaves labour and skills outside. — Incorrect. Commodification extends markets into spheres of life not traded before. Labour and skills are the first examples of things that become commodities, so they are not left outside.
Option (2) Buying a person's labour is accepted in pre-capitalist and capitalist societies alike. — Incorrect. Marx held that the idea of buying a person's labour for money is accepted only in capitalist societies. Pre-capitalist societies had no such general acceptance of a market in labour.
Option (3) Commodification is harmful in the trade of organs but not in the sale of labour. — Incorrect. For Marx, the commodification of labour is itself one example of the harm. The sale of kidneys is another case of the same process, so the two are not set apart.
Option (4) The process of commodification has negative social effects. — Correct. The village sees factory labour, paid tuition and an offer to buy kidneys. All are commodification: things once outside the market become things bought and sold, and Marx and other critics of capitalism held that this has negative social effects.
NCERT (2026-27): “Commoditisation and Consumption |