What the market will bear
Shannon, Thomas A.
1 i NWhnt the market will bear early five hundred children have been born to surrogate mothers. Clinics and brokerage agencies have been set up...
...The customer knows instrumentality of the salesperson's personality and [as a mirror which reflects this to the sales person...
...Its fuD understanding needs td:jii|II within a theory of human nature, a model of sociew, p&| 1 theory of labor...
...Thus, the sales becomes alienated from self...
...Thus,, personality traits become compn the labor market, 'lowing that personality is what influences the sale, a *;|>erson may transform his or her own personality into ;t designed to generate sales...
...THOMAS A. SHANNON A. Shannon is professor of religion and social at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and visiting 'e professor of medical ethics at the University of usetts Medical Center...
...Clinics and brokerage agencies have been set up to meet the rising demand...
...Commodification can ,'tjte rest of one's life by introducing the suspicion interpersonal relations are characterized by such ifation...
...f People also are subject to commodification...
...a surrogate advocacy group has beenformed...
...Si Immanuel Kant articulated a similar view in;argiiin||| against prostitution: '> J^l^lffl To let one's person out on hire and to surren|e||l' 11 to another for the satisfaction of his sexual desp'Jil ?H return for money is the depth of infamy...
...24 April 1987: 235...
...Persons are reduced%1cdi^J modities when they are valued only with respectft|)n«||j utility or exchange value...
...i^liV'wl For Marx and Kant, prostitution is the para|igli||«| alienation because one becomes a commodity ai«|ti^n| a gap between body and self...
...This means that it ha$ gone beyond what it wajs designed to do and now has value because of the possibility of exchanging it for something else, money for example...
...In 1953, C, Wright Mills (WhitekMlM the American Middle Class, Oxford) adapted theMcj||| cepts to white-collar labor...
...In modern bureaucratized organi§&i workers '-- particularly white-collar workers — their social personality...
...p> customer also wishes to hide from the fact that the jpferson is trying tq.exploit him or her, and develops a ' 'personality to manipulate the sales person...
...They can be teduced to means and nor s6en "ascends fa their owij right...
...j^f®^ ^ii body is part of the self...
...He is co-auther, with 'sN...
...This is a consequence of j&* society dominated not only by the market, but J&rketing ideology: anything can be sold with the methods ofiinfluence...
...Karl Marx noted that an object becomes a commodity when it has exchange value through" its position in the market...
...Ths.proeess may not yet be commonplace, but it has caught fee public imagination and resonates with the current emphasis on entrepreneurial activity- One editorial cartoon pictured a greeting card section for ''Surrogate-Mother's Day," "surrogatemothers' birthdays/1 etc., showing what complications — as well as marketing possibilities — await us...
...One disturbing factor underlying the entire discussion pf surrogacy deserves a closet look: society has become increasingly comfortable with, the '"^ommodification" of persons...
...Fasco, O.F.M., of let Them Go Free...
...In contrast to preindusffi^||eM societies, in which individuals traded or sold comnjo|Me||| to each other, in industrialized societies, the woftpiii|lB 234: Commonweal labor and services...
...if they are personally engaged with Customer...
...While persons can be valued for human, characteristics, such as honesty, love, and sympathy, they can also have an exchange value, i.e., the value the person pbssesSi when acquired as a good...
...The self becomes MjlipM because one becomes a means and not an end...
...the impersonality of relations because of influences and the marketing strategy of having f. ftvsales...
...Each from the other as alienation of the worker and icatio&of the person become the norm, contemporary labor differs from the artisan of industrial age and the body-breaking work of early im, it commodities workers through the developthe> market personality...
...Such commodification does not appear alien, particularly in capitalistic societies, but rather as the way things are...
...Clearly, the problems associated with surroampfify such suspicions...
...modem bureaucratized society, there are two oppostries...
...y ill jffl This theory of alienation was developed in th#Mf| || I the industrial revolution and the beginnings of;|aIsj5^J I faire capitalism...
...CajlcuIatiOtt catt enter int& ill ^pects <>f personal relations and radically transform them into relations between buyer and seller,' w1ucb may then be accepted as normal...
...in its togetherness wi^fe'il self it constitutes the person...
...Thus, the value of the object is determined not by its use-value, but by its market value — for what else or how 'much it can be exchanged...
Vol. 114 • April 1987 • No. 8
