“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”
Despite the fact that Marx first wrote about the concept of “commodification” one and a half centuries ago, it is only in the last 25 years or so that the term has come into popularity (leave it to liberals to ‘borrow’ one of Marx’s ideas 125 years after the fact and then call it their own and praise themselves for their magnificent brilliance).
But, given that new items are being commodified at alarming rates, maybe liberals can be forgiven for coming slightly late to the party.
There are countless examples of items which have become, as of late, owned and thus commodified by corporations. Two examples include: Human and animal genomes which are now owned by corporations every time a new discovery is made; Fox News successfully countered a court case challenging their right to own the phrase “Fair and Balanced”; and the song ‘happy birthday’, to which every sung performance must be met with royalties to the song’s owners, as Girl Scouts of America learned the hard way.
There is nothing particularly new or secretive about this development. However, when I learned of this new development in commodification, I was at a loss for words:
Marketing a product that claims to connect one to God is nothing new. The Catholic Church practiced something more or less similar to this for hundreds of years under their practice of the ‘buying of indulgences‘.
But actually copyrighting the phrase “Believe in God”? Chutzpah, pure chutzpah.
I recently came across an interview with Joel Kovel, the man behind A Really Inconvenient Truth and Enemy of Nature.
Paulitics 
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