Alt Left: Modern Life and the Commodification of Just About Everything

There’s a lot of talk about the commodification of daily life lately as we become increasingly atomized and, yes, commodified.

Now our cars, our bodies, our homes and apartments, and not just our time and skills, are commodified. We are all supposedly to commodify every aspect of our existence that will allow us to get hired by some 1 percenter as some glorified servant. Rent your ass and everything you own to some rich man. That’s the mantra. Check out Thomas Friedman for his suggestions on how to whore out everything you own in order to keep a roof over your head and stomach filled.

Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and other atrocities are perfect of examples of the commodification of our lives in which our cars and even homes become commodities to be whored out to whomever so we can survive.

Rock and roll? Just another commodity. They play rock songs at Republican Conventions for God’s sake. Revolution? An ad campaign can blazen the word revolution across ads for all sorts of things with the result being millions in profits. Woodstock? Commodity. Hippies? Commodity. Punks? Another commodity,  nothing but a hair style. Piercings? Commodity? Tattoos, the original form of ultimate rebellion? Commodity.

All of these things once had a deep meaning which went quite a ways against the corporate capitalist consumption as a way of life culture. In fact, most of these things were rebellions against that sort of sleaze, a giant middle finger and that cheapening of all life other than a dollar bill.

Now they all have no meaning other than money objects for some capitalist to make money off of. All of their rebellion and the brilliant and even revolutionary critiques they had of society have been sucked out of them. Any of those things might as well be another product in a bin at Walmart.

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