One of the most important concepts in Marxist theory that helps to understand relationships of production
in modern society is commodity (something that has been produced for the purpose of being exchanged or sale). The commodity form was a starting point for Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism. He argued that when the bourgeois, in the process of accumulating wealth, produces goods and services solely for the purpose of sale them they become commodities (Greenhalgh, 2005). Marx called this process of buying and sale of commodities as capitalism since that this system is built around the drive to increase capital. In this process the workers become a commodity as the capitalist buy their labour with money. It is also interesting to observe that as services become commodified the process of transformation of nature into city takes place. For instance Kaika and Swyngedouw (2000) in their study about the fetishizing urban spaces used water and water networks as an example to describe the shift of meanings of urban technological networks during modernity. They argue that as water becomes commodified nature itself becomes re-invented in its urban form. Moreover, according to them this takes place in terms of cultural code of hygiene, aesthetic, cleanliness and other uses of water as mere use value. Therefore they argue that during twentieth century high-modernity urban networks became ‘urban fetishes’ (fetishism in this context denotes the idea that things can be seen as possessing human properties or satisfy human needs) encompassing a materially and culturally ideology of progress. This can be a classic example of the relevance and applicability of Karl Marx’s theory to modern society by understanding the process through which people’s values changes at the same pace as goods and services become commodified through the expansion of technological networks. Marx would suggest that the extent to what people’s values changes depends on modifications in society’s technological superstructure. It is also interesting to notice that urban technological networks in high-modernity expand at the same pace as privatization and commodification of other goods and services. For instance, the water industry was one of a number of publicly owned enterprises and assets being privatized during the 1980s in the UK. The Government justified its privatization program on water as being a positive contribution towards improving industrial performance and consequently generating greater efficiency for customers and the nation at low costs. However, financial evidence contradicts Government claims as lower costs did not occur and instead this scheme generated a conflict between consumers and shareholders (Bakker, 2005). This example illustrates how technology serves only the demands of the rich by accentuating inequality, rising innovation and generating conflict between workers and capital owners. This idea is also expressed in the following Marx’s quote:“The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist" (Marx, K, 1978: 92).This quote clearly delineates how technology is an unconscious reproduction of the innovatory dynamism of capitalism, with its revolutionary rather than conservative technical base. In addition, many conflict theorists regard technological development as something artificial, a perspective plausibly inherited from responses to industrial technology with no concerns about human existence. For instance, Warner (2000) argues that technology has been left to the technicians, who may not be concerned with issues of human and social significance. Paradoxically, technological ‘progress’ also seems to occur when people no longer have to exercise or explore their mental capacity (Potts, 2005). Thus, Karl Marx would suggest that technology dehumanizes and diminishes peoples’ creativity since that it is driven only by the creation of innovative commodities, goods or services that may in fact not be intrinsic to human nature or satisfy their ‘real’ needs.