Capitalism’s defining move is abstracting exchange value from ordinary life processes

Evidence

On this reading of Marx, at the core of industrial capitalism’s longterm transformation of the social world was how work (the everyday productive activities that have gone on since the beginning of time) acquired an abstract dimension that enabled it to be commodified, that is, turned into a commodity that could be exchanged. It is this possibility of abstracting value from life processes, even when they are not directly productive activities, that leaves open the prospect of new types of commodified social relations and, through them, a new social order for capitalism. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 146

Categorization

• DEFINE: States the mechanism by which everyday non-work life becomes commodifiable — the load-bearing definition of the data-colonialism frame.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalism commodified things for their exchange value, not their intrinsic worth — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 122; Finance functions to obscure capitalism’s raw dependence on precarious life — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 46; The derivative logic reveals how disconnected capitalist processes derive value from each other — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 482 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Abstracting value from life processes enables new commodified social relations #expands (0.88)
• Subordinating social values to economic value is capitalism’s fundamental logic #expands (0.88) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 346
• Finance functions to obscure capitalism’s raw dependence on precarious life #expands (0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 46
• Under capitalism consumption targets abstract value rather than bodily need #exemplifies (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 753
• Capitalism functions by redirecting social reproduction toward its own ends #expands (0.82) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 347
• Market ideology conceals exploitation by making exchange stand in for production #corroborates (0.82)
• Exchange becomes totalized across society by encroaching on production #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1376
• The derivative logic reveals how disconnected capitalist processes derive value from each other #exemplifies (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 482
• Capitalism reproduces itself by drawing civil and cultural life into conformity with its needs #expands (0.78)
• The sphere of exchange generates capitalism’s spontaneous commonsense and bourgeois theory #expands (0.75)