The Myth of Marketization: An Evaluation of the Persistence of Non-Market Activities in Advanced Economies
Across the social sciences, a recurring theme is that market production, where goods and services are produced for monetized exchange by capitalist firms for profit-motivated purposes, has replaced non-market production in the advanced economies. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically this marketization thesis. Analyzing data on the volume of market and non-market activity, this paper reveals not only the relatively shallow penetration of the market sphere but also how for some four decades, contrary to the marketization thesis, the non-market sphere has been growing relative to the market realm. Rather than view non-market activity as a vestige of a pre-capitalist past, this paper thus explains the persistence and growth of non-market activity as a product of both the prevalence of resistance cultures to marketism and the inherent contradictions embedded in the pursuit of marketization. The paper thus concludes that not only is there a need to decentre representations of the market as victorious, pervasive and hegemonic, but also for greater recognition and value to be given to the non-market realm and the possibility of alternative futures beyond marketization.