The Marketisation of Human Worth
Ehmed Sameer:
In The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, we encounter Gregor Samsa — a man whose worth is tied almost entirely to his economic role. Gregor works as a travelling salesman, tirelessly paying off his father’s debts. His identity revolves around one function alone: earning money for the family.
Over time, Gregor begins to believe that his presence carries weight in family affairs because of the sacrifices he makes. Yet this belief rests on a fragile illusion. What he considers moral worth is essentially economic productivity.
One morning Gregor wakes up transformed into a giant insect. With this transformation, he loses the ability to work. He becomes economically useless. Soon he is seen as a burden and a disgrace to the family. His sister, who initially shows sympathy, eventually declares that they must get rid of him.
Kafka’s story reveals a disturbing truth: the moment Gregor becomes unproductive, he becomes morally disposable.
The narrative thus captures the profound alienation embedded in modern socio-economic life. It illustrates how the modern economic order often reduces human beings to mere instruments of labour.
Even before his transformation, Gregor’s life was defined by endless travel, mechanical work, absence of personal freedom, and lack of meaningful relationships. Yet he believed that these sacrifices gave value to his life because they served his family.
This raises a troubling question:
In modern capitalist society, are we loved for who we are, or only for what we produce?
Increasingly, the economic system seems to have quietly redefined the yardsticks of morality:
Dignity becomes productivity
Compassion becomes calculation
Relationships become economic arrangements
The influence of this shift can be seen across many domains of contemporary life.
War and the Language of Strategic Necessity
Consider the wars unfolding in different parts of the world today.
Human life once carried an intrinsic moral value. Today it is often framed in instrumental terms. Institutions created after the devastation of global conflicts — such as the United Nations — were meant to protect humanity from catastrophe. As its second Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld famously observed:
“The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”
Yet contemporary wars are frequently justified through the language of strategic and economic necessity: protection of trade routes, energy security, geopolitical stability, and the defence of democratic order.
At times, even narratives of women’s empowerment and human rights are invoked to legitimise military interventions. Civilian deaths then become “collateral damage” — tragic but acceptable losses in pursuit of larger strategic goals.
Through such vocabulary, the language of economics and geopolitics often sanitises moral horror, reshaping our moral sensibilities.
Environmental Morality in the Age of Growth
The changing moral framework is also visible in our relationship with nature.
Traditional societies often maintained a relatively balanced relationship with the environment. Many indigenous communities continue to view the protection of nature as a sacred duty.
However, since the Industrial Revolution, the dominant mindset increasingly views nature through the lens of economic benefit. What emerges is a shift from “Nature as Sacred” to “Nature as Resource.”
Economic reasoning now frequently argues that environmental damage is acceptable if economic growth outweighs the costs. Reports from institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change repeatedly warn about the consequences of such thinking.
If development continues to ignore environmental limits, a fundamental question arises: will the Earth remain habitable for future generations?
Even regions like Kashmir are witnessing unusual climatic patterns, with summer-like temperatures appearing during spring. Such shifts are reminders of a moral framework that assigns price tags to nature rather than recognising its intrinsic worth.
Market Logic and Human Relationships
The philosopher Herbert Marcuse described modern society through the idea of the “One-Dimensional Man.” In such a society, individuals increasingly evaluate actions solely through material calculations.
If benefits outweigh costs, the activity is considered worthwhile.
This logic is now penetrating human relationships. Care for parents or children, once regarded as a moral duty across cultures and religions, is increasingly outsourced, priced, and optimised. Emotional labour itself becomes a paid service.
The unsettling question that follows is simple: is care now valued only when it is economically measurable?
Economic Narratives and the Politics of Poverty
It is sometimes said that economists today are the “unacknowledged legislators of the world,” shaping public understanding of social reality much like poets once did.
Economic narratives strongly influence how society interprets problems such as poverty. Increasingly, poverty is framed as an outcome of individual shortcomings:
lack of skills
insufficient effort
poor choices
Such explanations often obscure deeper structural factors: unequal starting points, caste and gender hierarchies, colonial legacies, and unequal access to education and healthcare.
Reducing poverty to individual failure risks ignoring the structural injustices embedded in social systems.
Education and the Triumph of Instrumentalism
Education too has not escaped the logic of instrumentalism.
Traditionally, education aimed at cultivating character, wisdom, and human potential. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously remarked, the purpose of education is “intelligence plus character.”
Yet today education is increasingly judged by economic returns. Students often choose disciplines primarily based on employability, market demand, and return on investment.
As a result, fields such as philosophy, literature, and the arts are frequently dismissed as unproductive. The worth of education becomes tied almost exclusively to income potential.
Such an approach struggles to address deeper crises facing humanity — including spiritual emptiness and environmental degradation.
Conclusion
From environmental policy to education, from global conflicts to family relationships, the logic of economic productivity appears to shape our moral universe.
In many ways our world begins to resemble the tragedy of Gregor Samsa. Like him, societies are increasingly expected to perform a single function: to produce, to grow, and to remain economically useful.
But a civilisation guided only by utility risks losing sight of the deeper purposes of human existence.
The challenge before us is therefore not merely economic but moral. As thinkers like Karl Marx suggested through the relationship between economic base and ideological superstructure, material structures profoundly shape social values.
Yet human societies must also retain the capacity to question those structures.
For if worth continues to be measured only in productivity, we may eventually discover — like Gregor Samsa — that in the eyes of the system, we were never valued for our humanity in the first place.
