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Karl Polanyi refers to land, labor, and money as “fictitious commodities” because, although they became incorporated into industrial markets as key elements during the 19th-century transformation, they are not commodities produced for sale. This shift had profound consequences: treating labor, or essentially human beings, as a commodity results in systemic exploitation of people, as economic interests preceded social and ethical considerations. Ultimately, society would naturally develop resistance as part of the “Double Movement.”

According to Polanyi, labor is simply human activity, land is just nature, and money is merely a token of purchasing power. As these “fictitious commodities” became central to the market economy, they forced a market society in turn. This marked a turning point from pre-market society, where economic activity primarily served social purposes, to market society where social relationships are subordinated to economic imperatives. Now, people tend to perceive everything revolving around its economic costs and fail to recognize other values such as cultural and social weights. The commodification of labor, in particular, leads to suffering because human beings have physical, emotional, and social needs.

The commodification of labor leads to widespread exploitation of people, driven by capitalism’s profit-maximizing mindset. From the expropriation of European workers to the enslavement of Native Americans and Africans during the plantation era, people were reduced to mere tools for achieving capitalist gains. Following industrialization, waged workers endured long working hours and poor working conditions with little protection for their well-being. Even children were forced into factory labor. Women faced even greater oppression because they reproduced the labor force. In Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici argues that primitive accumulation, the foundational process of capitalism, required destruction of the power of women. For instance, the “Great Witch-Hunt” of the 16th and 17th centuries demonized women who pursued reproductive autonomy; in doing so, the state turned “[women’s] wombs” into “public territory” to serve capitalist accumulation. This commodification allowed exploitation of women beyond wage labor: the state appropriated women’s bodies and reproductive labor, stripped women of their social and cultural roles, and reduced them to economic tools valued for their utilitarian function in capital accumulation.

This tension between market forces and human needs would ultimately trigger what Polanyi calls the “Double Movement,” where society responds with spontaneous countermovements against the expansion of free markets and full commodification of “fictitious commodities.” Examples include labor laws, minimum wages, women’s access to birth control and abortion rights.