ABSTRACT
The end of growth can be explained as the exhaustion of the capitalist economy’s “driving force”, namely, the mechanism that transforms needs into commodities. The goods that tend to take more importance in people’s lives – environmental quality, security, information, medical and social care, etc. – are not typical commodities in the sense of appropriable, substitutable and moneymaking goods. As such, their production hardly fits into the capitalist process of self-sustained accumulation. The main purpose of this text is to show that quite a few social innovations and emerging social practices – solidarity-based economy, circular economy, collaborative economy, etc. – contribute to this evolution and bring answers with them. The key concept of this analysis is “decommodification”, understood in a wider sense to include diverse forms of market logic hybridization. Finally, this chapter outlines a decommodification-oriented public policy in order to reduce monetary needs and to intensify the circulation of “non-commodities”.
