Philippine E-Journals

THE PERSON IN THE MARKET: THREATS AND POSSIBILITIES

Willard Enrique R. Macaraan

 

Abstract:

 

The market, after a long yet undisturbed evolution, has finally become an imposing superstructure that does not simply connote a place of production, exchange and purchase but transcends the noneconomic spheres of human life, even its moral-cultural order. At the core of this evolution is the human person, no more an agent but more like its slave. Everything has become commodified–literally: from goods produced by human labor and ingenuity to even the body of the producer him/herself.

Worse, the human person in all his or her integrity and wholeness can now be purchased, bargained, and exchanged. Even the sphere of interpersonal relations is limited by the increase of formal and impersonal interactions. The trends of social networking, online selling and marketing, text messaging--among others—have now become the system of relations, however provisional and short term.

What then is the value of personhood? The reduction of human beings by market capitalism to units of productive power demands therefore a greater need for a philosophical position that can challenge these dehumanizing elements and structures.