Market Society Essay

Words: 1657
Pages: 7

This paper is going to explain about the important shift to market society by explaining the material and ideological conditions that help integrate the society to transform into the market society. Firstly, this paper is going to explain the material conditions by showing what characterizes a market society and this also show how the market society differs from the structures of the previous social organization, and also the changes that take place in the workplace due to the shift to market society. Secondly, this paper will also be discussing the ideological conditions by looking at the early “protestant work ethic” and the “spirit of capitalism” and how those two is important to the emergence of the market society. Lastly, this paper …show more content…
72); the same also goes for money, as it “is merely a token for purchasing power . . .” (Polanyi, p. 72). None of these are suppose to be commodities but with the emergence of market society these elements of industry are being bought and sold in the market as their demand and supply is big. Nowadays any object can be a commodity, any object that can be produced and sell are now treated as commodity, and another example of this is the commodification of water.
The workplace is also affected due to the shift into market society. There are some changes that take place in the workplace particularly the changes that happen between the pre-industrial and the industrial period. The important change is during the industrial period with the introduction of the factory system. The factory system goal is to “generate profit and accumulate capital” (Reinhart, p. 30) with this goal in mind, the factory system introduces changes such as “regulated modes of wage payment, the methods, pace, scheduling, and allocation of work, and the recruitment and training of workers” (Reinhart, p.30) not to mention that some of the workers are replaced by machines for maximized profits. The factory system also produces goods based on the demand and supply of the society in contrast of the independent production system in the pre-industrial period, where goods were produced domestically and for