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Commodity fetishism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Karl Mary's critique of political economy ,
commodity fetishism is the perception of the social
relationships involved in production, not as
relationships among people, but as economic
relationships among the money and commodities
exchanged in market trade. As such, commodity
fetishism transforms the subjective, abstract aspects
of economic value into objective, real things that
people believe have intrinsic value!)
The theory of commodity fetishism is presented in
the first chapter of Capital: Critique of Political
Economy (1867), at the conclusion of the analysis of
the value-form of commodities, to explain that the
social organization of labour is mediated through
market exchange, the buying and the selling of
commodities (goods and services). Hence, ina
capitalist society, social relations between people—
who makes what, who works for whom, the production-time for a commodity, et cetera—are perceived as,
economic relations among objects, that is, how valuable a given commodity is when compared to another
commodity, ‘Therefore, the market exchange of commodities masks (obscures) the true economic character
Commodity fetishism: In the marketplace, producers
and consumers perceive each other by means of the
money and goods that they exchange.
of the human relations of production, between the worker and the capitalist.)
Karl Marx explained the philosophic concepts underlying commodity fetishism thus
As against this, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour
within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the
commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social
relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a
relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the
misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous
figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other
and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's
hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as
they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of
commodities.
— Karl Marx , Capital, Volume 1]
Contents
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= 1 The concept of fetishism
= 2 The theory of commodity fetishism
= 2.1 In the critique of political economy
2.2 The domination of things
2.3 Objectified value
2.4 Naturalisation of market behaviour
2.5 Masking
2.6 The opacity of economic relations
3 Applications
= 3.1 Cultural theory
= 3.2 Intellectual property
4 In other economic theory
= 4.1 Subjective wants
5 Criticism
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
The concept of fetishism
The theory of commodity fetishism (German: Warenfetischismus)
originated from Karl Marx's references to fetishes and fetishism in
his analyses of religious superstition, and in the criticism of the
beliefs of political economists.{4! Marx borrowed the concept of
"fetishism" from The Cult of Fetish Gods (1760) by Charles de
Brosses, which proposed a materialist theory of the origin of
religion.5] Moreover, in the 1840s, the philosophic discussion of
fetishism by Auguste Comte, and Ludwig Feuerbach's
psychological interpretation of religion also influenced Marx's
development of commodity fetishism. §II7]
Marx's first mention of fetishism appeared in 1842, in his response
to a newspaper article by Karl Heinrich Hermes, which defended
the Prussian state on religious grounds.'§] Hermes agreed with the
German philosopher Hegel in regarding fetishism as the crudest
form of religion, Marx dismissed that argument, and Hermes's
definition of religion as that which elevates man "above sensuous
appetites", Instead, Marx said that fetishism is "the religion of
sensuous appetites", and that the fantasy of the appetites tricks the
fetish worshipper into believing that an inanimate object will yield
its natural character to gratify the desires of the worshipper.
Therefore, the crude appetite of the fetish worshipper smashes the
fetish when it ceases to be of service.!°!
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Fetishism: a South African fetish
figurine whose supernatural powers
protect the owner and kin in the
natural world (ea. 1900)
26e2n01s CCommesty feishism - Wikipedia, the fee enoyclopsdia
The next mention of fetishism was in the 1842 Rheinische Zeitung newspaper articles about the "Debates on
the Law on Thefts of Wood’, wherein Marx spoke of the Spanish fetishism of gold and the German
fetishism of wood as commodities: [10]
(http://www marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1842/10/25.htm) Eve nny
The savages of Cuba regarded gold as a fetish of
the Spaniards. They celebrated a feast in its
honour, sang in a circle around it, and then threw
it into the sea. If the Cuban savages had been
present at the sitting of the Rhine Province
Assembly, would they not have regarded wood as
the Rhinelanders’ fetish? But a subsequent sitting
would have taught them that the worship of
animals is connected with this fetishism, and they
would have thrown the hares into the sea in order
to save the human beings.
Inthe Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx spoke
of the European fetish of precious-metal money
The nations which are still dazzled by the
sensuous glitter of precious metals, and are, Metal money fetishism: A politic
therefore, still fetish-worshippers of metal money,
are not yet fully developed money-nations, [Note
the} contrast of France and England, The extent to
which the solution of theoretical riddles is the task
of practice, and is effected through practice, the
extent to which true practice is the condition of a
real and positive theory, is shown, for example, in
fetishism. The sensuous consciousness of the
fetish-worshipper is different from that of the
Greek, because his sensuous existence is different.
The abstract enmity between sense and spirit is
necessary so long as the human feeling for nature,
the human sense of nature, and, therefore, also the
natural sense of man, are not yet produced by
poster shows gold coin as the basis of
prosperity. (ca, 1896)
man's own labour.)
In the ethnological notebooks, he commented upon the archaological reportage of The Origin of
Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man: Mental and Social conditions of Savages (1870), by John
Lubbock.!' In the Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse, 1859), he criticized the
statist, anti-socialist arguments of the French economist Frédérie Bastiat, and about fetishes and fetishism
Marx said:
Inreal history, wage labour arises out of the dissolution of slavery and serfdom — or of
the decay of communal property, as with Oriental and Slavonic peoples — and, in its
adequate, epoch-making form, the form which takes possession of the entire social being
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of labour, out of the deciine and tall of the guild economy, of the system ot Lsstates, ot
labour and income in kind, of industry carried on as rural subsidiary occupation, of small-
scale feudal agriculture, etc. In all these real historic transitions, wage labour appears as
the dissolution, the annihilation of relations in which labour was fixed on all sides, in its
income, its content, its location, its scope, etc. Hence, as negation of the stability of labour
and of its remuneration, The direct transition from the African's fetish to Voltaire's
"Supreme Being", or from the hunting gear of a North American savage to the capital of
the Bank of England, is not so absurdly contrary to history, as is the transition from
Bastiat’s fisherman to the wage labourer.!!21
In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx referred to A Discourse on the Rise,
Progress, Peculiar Objects, and Importance of Political Economy (1825), by John Ramsay McCulloch,
who said that "In its natural state, matter ... is always destitute of value", with which Marx concurred,
saying that "this shows how high even a McCulloch stands above the fetishism of German ‘thinkers! who
that ‘material’, and half a dozen similar irrelevancies are elements of value"
Furthermore, in the manuscript of "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" (ca. 1864), an appendix
to Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (1867), Marx said that:
we find in the capitalist process of production [an] indissoluble fusion of use-values in
which capital subsists [as] means of production and objects defined as capital, when what
we are really faced with is a definite social relationship of production. In consequence, the
product embedded in this mode of production is equated with the commodity, by those
‘who have to deal with it. It is this that forms the foundation for the fetishism of the
political economists.!!3!
Hence did Karl Marx apply the concepts of fetish and fetishism, derived from economic and ethnologic
studies, to the development of the theory of commodity fetishism, wherein an economic abstraction (value)
is psychologically transformed (reified) into an object, which people choose to believe has an intrinsic
value, in and of itself!)
The theory of commodity fetishism
In the critique of political economy
Karl Marx proposed that, in a society where independent, private producers trade their products with each
other, of their own volition and initiative, and without much co-ordination of market exchange, the volumes
of production and commercial activities are adjusted in accordance with the fluctuating values of the
produets (goods and services) as they are bought and sold, and in accordance with the fluctuations of supply
and demand, Because their social co-existence, and its meaning, is expressed through market exchange
(trade and transaction), people have no other relations with each other. Therefore, social relations are
continually mediated and expressed with objects (commodities and money). How the traded commodities
relate will depend upon the costs of production, which are reducible to quantities of human labour, although
the worker has no control over what happens to the commodities that he or she produces, (See
Enafremdung, Marx's theory of alienation)
The domination of things
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The concept of the intrinsic value of commodities (goods and services) determines and dominates the
economic (business) relationships among people, to the extent that buyers and sellers continually adjust
their beliefs (financial expectations) about the value of things — either consciously or unconsciously — to
the proportionate price changes (market-value) of the commodities over which buyers and sellers believe
they have no true control. That psychologic perception transforms the trading-value of a commodity into an
independent entity (an object), to the degree that the social value of the goods and services appears to be a
natural property of the commodity, itself. Thence objectified, she market appears as if self-regulated (by
fluctuating supply and demand) because, in pursuit of profit, the consumers of the products ceased to
perceive the human co-operation among capitalists that is the true engine of the market where commodities
are bought and sold; such is the domination of things in the market.
Objectified value
The value of a commodity originates from the human being's intellectual and perceptual capacity to
consciously (subjectively) ascribe a relative value (importance) to a commodity, the goods and services
manufactured by the labour of a worker. Therefore, in the course of the economic transactions (buying and
selling) that constitute market exchange, people ascribe subjective values to the commodities (goods and
services), which the buyers and the sellers then perceive as objective values, the market-exchange prices
that people will pay for the commodities
Naturalisation of market behaviour
Ina capitalist society, the human perception that "the market" is an independent, sentient entity, is how
buyers, sellers, and producers naturalise market exchange (the human choices and decisions that constitute
commerce) as a series of "natural phenomena . .. that .. . happen of their own accord”. Such were the
political-economy arguments of the economists whom Karl Marx criticized when they spoke of the "natural
equilibria’ of markets, as if the price (value) of a commodity were independent of the volition and initiative
of the capitalist producers, buyers, and sellers of commodities.
In the 18th century, the Scottish social philosopher and political economist Adam Smith, in The Wealth of
Nations (1776) proposed that the "truck, barter, and exchange" activities of the market were corresponding
economic representations of human nature, that is, the buying and selling of commodities were activities
intrinsic to the market, and thus are the "natural behaviour" of the market. Hence, Smith proposed that a
market economy was a self-regulating entity that "naturally" tended towards economic equilibrium, wherein
the relative prices (the value) of a commodity ensured that the buyers and sellers obtained what they wanted
for and from their goods and services.{'5]
In the 19th century, Karl Marx contradicted the artifice of Adam Smith's "natur: ition of the market's
behaviour" as a politico-ideologic apology — by and for the capitalists — which allowed human economic
choices and decisions to be misrepresented as fixed "facts of life", rather than as the human actions that
resulted from the will of the producers, the buyers, and the sellers of the commodities traded at market
Such "immutable economic laws" are what Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867) revealed about
the functioning of the capitalist mode of production, how goods and services (commodities) are circulated
among a society; and thus explain the psychological phenomenon of commodity fetishism, which ascribes
an independent, objective value and reality to a thing that has no inherent value — other than the value
given to it by the producer, the seller, and the buyer of the commodity.
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Masking
Ina capitalist economy, a character mask (Charactermaske) is the functional role with which a man or a
woman relates and is related to in a society composed of stratified social classes, especially in relationships
and market-exchange transactions; thus, in the course of buying and selling, the commodities (goods and
services) usually appear other than they are, because they are masked (obscured) by the role-playing of the
buyer and the seller. Moreover, because the capitalist economy of a class society is an intrinsically
contradictory system, the masking of the true socio-economic character of the transaction is an integral
feature of its function and operation as market exchange. In the course of business competition among
themselves, buyers, sellers, and producers cannot do business (compete) without obscurity —
confidentiality and secrecy — thus the necessity of the character masks that obscure true economic motive
Central to the Marxist critique of political economy is the obscurantism of the juridical labour contras
between the worker and the capitalist, that masks the true, exploitive nature of their economic relationship
— that the worker does not sell his and her labour, but that the worker sells individual labour power, the
human capacity to perform work and manufacture commodities (goods and services) that yield a profit to
the producer. The work contract is the mask that obscures the economic exploitation of the difference
between the wages paid for the labour of the worker, and the new value created by the labour of the worker.
Karl Marx thus established that, in a capitalist society, the creation of wealth is based upon "the paid and
unpaid portions of labour [that] are inseparably mixed up with each other, and the nature of the whole
transaction is completely masked by the intervention of a contract, and the pay received at the end of the
week"; and that:!161
Vulgar economics actually does nothing more than to interpret, to systematize and turn
into apologetics — in a doctrinaire way — the ideas of the agents who are trapped within
bourgeois relations of production. So it should not surprise us that, precisely within the
estranged form of appearance of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and
complete contradictions occur — and all science would be superfluous if the form of
appearance of things directly coincided with their essence — that precisely here vulgar
economies feels completely at home, and that these relationships appear all the more self-
evident to it, the more their inner interconnection remains hidden to it, even though these
relationships are comprehensible to the popular mind
— Das Kapital Volume 3.!"71
The opacity of economic relations
The primary valuation of the trading-value of goods and services (commodities) is expressed as mon
prices, The buyers and the sellers determine and establish the economic and financial relationships, and
afterwards compare the prices in and the price trends of the market. Moreover, because of the masking of
true economie motive, neither the buyer, nor the seller, nor the producer perceive and understand every
human labour-activity required to deliver the commodities (goods and services), nor do they perceive the
workers whose labour facilitated the purchase of commodities. The economic results of such collective
human labour are expressed as the values and the prices of the commodities; the value-relations between
the amount of human labour and the value of the supplied commodity.
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Applications
Cultural theory
Since the 19th century, when Karl Marx presented the theory of commodity
fetishism, in Section 4, "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret
thereof”, of the first chapter of Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867),
the constituent concepts of the theory, and their sociologie and economic
explanations, have proved intellectually fertile propositions that permit the
application of the theory (interpretation, development, adaptation) to the
study, examination, and analysis of other cultural aspects of the political
economy of capitalism, such as
= Sublimated sexuality
The theory of sexual fetishism, which Alfred Binet presented in the essay Le
fétichisme dans l'amour: la vie psychique des micro-organismes, I'intensité
des images mentales, etc. (Fetishism in Love: the Psychic Life of Micro-
organisms, the Intensity of Mental Images, etc., 1887), was applied to
interpret commodity fetishism as types of sexually-charged economic
relationships, between a person and a commodity (goods and services), as in
the case of advertising, which is a commercial enterprise that ascribes human
qualities (values) to a commodity, to persuade the buyer to purchase the
advertised goods and services.|'81
= Reification
In History and Class Consciousness (1923), Gyorgy Lukacs started from the
theory of commodity fetishism for his development of reification (the
psychological transformation of an abstraction into a concrete object) as the
principal obstacle to class consciousness, About which Lukées said: "Just as
the capitalist system continuously produces and reproduces itself
economically on higher levels, the structure of reification progressively sinks
more deeply, more fatefully, and more definitively into the consciousness of
Man" — hence, commodification pervaded every conscious human activity,
as the growth of capitalism commodified every sphere of human activity into
a product that can be bought and sold in the market!" (See:
Verdinglichung, Marx's theory of reification.)
= Industrialised culture
Gyorgy Lukées developed
Karl Marx's theory of
commodity fetishism to
develop reification theory,
Thorstein Veblen proposed
the conspicuous
consumption of
commodi
as the pursuit
stige.
of social pr
Commodity fetishism is theoretically central to the Frankfurt School philosophy, especially in the work of
the sociologist Theodor W. Adomo, which describes how the forms of commerce invade the human psyche;
how commerce casts a person into a role not of his or her making; and how commercial forces affect the
development of the psyche. In the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Adorno and Max Horkheimer
presented the Theory of the Culture Industry to describe how the human imagination (artistic, spiritual,
intellectual activity) becomes commodified when subordinated to the "natural commercial laws" of the
market.
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To the consumer, the cultural goods and services sold in the market appear to offer the promise of a richly
developed and creative individuality, yet the inherent commodification severely restricts and stunts the
human psyche, so that the man and the woman consumer has little "time for myself”, because of the
continual personification of cultural roles over which he and she exercise little control. In personifying such
cultural identities, the person is a passive consumer, not the active creator, of his or her life; the promised
life of individualistic creativity is incompatible with the collectivist, commercial norms of bourgeois
culture
= Commodity narcissism
In the study From Commodity Fetishism to Commodity Narcissism (2012) the investigators applied the
Marxist theory of commodity fetishism to psychologically analyse the economic behaviour (buying and
selling) of the contemporary consumer. With the concept of commodity narcissism, the psychologists
Stephen Dunne and Robert Cluley proposed that consumers who claim to be ethically concemed about the
manufacturing origin of commodities, nonetheless behaved as if ignorant of the exploitative labour
conditions under which the workers produced the goods and services, bought by the "concerned consumer",
that, within the culture of consumerism, narcissistic men and women have established shopping (economic
consumption) as a socially acceptable way to express aggression 20)
= Social prestige
In the 19th and in the 21st centuries, Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic
Study of Institutions, 1899) and Alain de Botton (Status Anxiety, 2004) respectively developed the social
status (prestige) relationship between the producer of consumer goods and the aspirations to prestige of the
consumer. To avoid the status anxiety of not being of or belonging to "the right social class", the consumer
establishes a personal identity (social, economic, cultural) that is defined and expressed by the commodities
(goods and services) that he or she buys, owns, and uses; the domination of things that communicate the
“correct signals" of social prestige, of belonging. (See: Conspicuous consumption.)
= Social alienation
In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord presented the theory of "le spectacle" — the systematic
conflation of advanced capitalism, the mass communications media, and a government amenable to
exploiting those factors. The spectacle transforms human relations into objectified relations among images,
and vice versa; the exemplar spectacle is television, the communications medium wherein people passively
allow (cultural) representations of themselves to become the active agents of their beliefs, The spectacle is
the form that society assumes when the Arts, the instruments of cultural production, have been
commodified as commercial activities that render an aesthetic value into a commercial value (a commodity).
Whereby artistic expression then is shaped by the person's ability to sell it as a commodity, that is, as
artistic goods and services.
Capitalism reorganises personal consumption to conform to the commercial principles of market exchange;
commodity fetishism transforms a cultural commodity into a product with an economic "life of its own"
that is independent of the volition and initiative of the artist, the producer of the commodity. What Karl
Marx critically anticipated in the 19th century, with "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret
thereof", Guy Debord interpreted and developed for the 20th century — that in modern society, the
psychologic intimacies of intersubjectivity and personal self-relation are commodified into and as discrete
“experiences” that can be bought and sold. The Society of the Spectacle is the ultimate form of social
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alienation that occurs when a person views his or her being (self) as a commodity that can be bought and
sold, because he or she regards every human relation as a (potential) business transaction. (See:
Enifremdung, Marx's theory of alienation)
= The semiotic sign
Jean Baudrillard applied commodity fetishism to explain the subjective feelings of men and women towards
consumer goods in the "realm of circulation", that is, the cultural mystique (mystification) that advertising
ascribed to the commodities (goods and services) in order to encourage the buyer to purchase the goods and
services as aids to the construction of his and her cultural identity, In the book For a Critique of the
Political Economy of the Sign (1972), Baudrillard developed the semiotic theory of "the Sign" (sign value)
as a development of Mary's theory of commodity fetishism and of the exchange value vs. use value
dichotomy of capitalism
Intellectual property
In the 21st century, the political economy of capitalism reified the abstract objects that are information and
knowledge into the tangible commodities of intellectual property, which are produced by and derived from
the labours of the intellectual and the white collar workers.
= Philosophic base
The Marxist economist Michael Perelman critically examined the belief systems from which arose
intellectual property rights, the field of law that commodified knowledge and information. Samuel Bowles
and Herbert Gintis critically reviewed the belief systems of the theory of human capital [11]
(http: /Auvalu santafe.edu/~bowles/). Knowledge, as the philosophic means to a better life, is contrasted with
capitalist knowledge (as commodity and capital), produced to generate income and profit. Such
commodification detaches knowledge and information from the (user) person, because, as intellectual
property, they are independent, economic entities.
= Knowledge: authentic and counterfeit
In Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), the Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson
linked the reification of information and knowledge to the post-modern distinetion between authentic
knowledge (experience) and counterfeit knowledge (vicarious experience), which usually is acquired
through the mass communications media. In Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality and
Advertising in Capitalist Society (1986), the philosopher Wolfgang Fritz. Haug presents a "critique of
commodity aesthetics" that examines how human needs and desires are manipulated and reshaped for
et)
commercial gain.
= Financial risk management
The sociologists Frank Furedi and Ulrich Beck studied the development of commodified types of
knowledge in the business culture of "risk prevention" in the management of money. The Post-World War
II economic expansion (ca, 1945-73) created very much money (capital and savings), while the dominant
bourgeois ideology of money favoured the risk-management philosophy of the managers of investment
funds and financial assets. From such administration of investment money, manipulated to create new
capital, arose the preoccupation with risk calculations, which subsequently was followed by the "economic
science" of risk prevention management.2/l23] In light of which, the commodification of money as
epsilon uthipetaorgvkiCammocty_festism onenos Commostyfetshism- Wikipedia there encylopeta
"financial investment funds" allows an ordinary person to pose as a rich person, as an economic risk-taker
able to risk losing money invested to the market. Hence, the fetishization of financial risk as "a sum of
money’ is a reification that distorts the social perception of the true nature of financial risk, as experienced
by ordinary people. 4! Moreover, the valuation of financial risk is susceptible to ideological bias; that
contemporary fortunes are achieved from the insight of experts in financial management, who study the
relationship between "known" and "unknown" economic factors, by which human fears about money can
be manipulated and exploited
= Commodified art
The cultural critics Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin examined and described the fetishes and fetishism
of Art, by means of which "artistic" commodities are produced for sale in the market, and how
commodification determines and establishes the value of the artistic commodities (goods and services)
derived from legitimate Art; for example, the selling of an artist's personal effects as "artistic fetishes"
= Legal traducement
In the field of law, the Soviet scholar Evgeny Pashukanis (The General Theory of Law and Marxism, 1924),
the Austrian politician Karl Renner, the German political scientist Franz Leopold Neumann, the British
socialist writer China Miéville, the labour-law attorney Mare Linder, and the American legal philosopher
Duncan Kennedy (The Role of Law in Economic Theory: Essays on the Fetishism of Commodities, 1985)
have respectively explored the applications of commodity fetishism in their contemporary legal systems,
and reported that the reification of legal forms misrepresents social relations.(25]1261
In other economic theory
Subjective wants
In Principles of Economics (1871), the capitalist economist Carl Menger, a founder of the Austrian School,
said that the attribution of value (commodity fetishism) is a matter of subjective preference:
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Carl Menger, a founder of the
Austrian School of economies,
proposed that commodity
fetishism is a person's
subjective preference
The value of goods, accordingly, is a phenomenon that springs from the same source as
the economie character of goods — that is, from the relationship, explained earlier,
between the requirements for and the available quantities of goods. But there is a
difference between the two phenomena, On the one hand, perception of this quantitative
relationship stimulates our provident activity, thus causing goods, subject to this,
relationship, to become objects of our economizing (i.e. economic goods). On the other
hand, perception of the same relationship makes us aware of the significance that [the]
command of each concrete unit of the available quantities of these goods has, for our lives
and well-being, thus causing it to attain value for us. Just as a penetrating investigation of
mental processes makes the cognition of external things appear to be merely our
consciousness of the impressions made by the external things upon our persons, and thus,
in the final analysis, merely the cognition of states of our own persons, so too, in the final
analysis, is the importance that we attribute to things of the external world only an outflow
of the importance to us of our continued existence and development (life and well-being),
Value is, therefore, nothing inherent in goods, no property of them, but merely the
importance that we first attribute to the satisfaction of our needs, that is, to our lives and
well-being, and in consequence carry over to economic goods as the exclusive causes of
the satisfaction of our needs.
—Carl Menger, Principles of Economics (1871), chapter 31771
Theoretically, the market tends to adjust supply to demand, for which reason, economists extrapolate a
“natural tendeney of markets to reach equilibrium” if there is no outside interference. The Ancient Greek
philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), in the Nicomachean Ethics, noted such "market behaviour", and said
that the increased value of a commodity was relative to the buyer's demand for the commodity 28]
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In the 19th century, Karl Marx's contemporary, Carl Menger (1840-1921), proposed the "Theory of
Subjective Wants", wherein the behaviour of the market is explainable only in terms of the subjective wants
of the buyer and the seller. The market expanded because the intensity of the buyers’ want increased
desires; if the market contracted, it was because of the buyers’ decreased desires. That "market freedom"
might be an illusion, created by buyers and sellers in order to control of the economic choices available to
them, as determined by the supply and the demand for commodities (goods and services). Buyers feel
unconstrained by the activities of the market because they have internalized the rules for buying and selling
commodities. Although people might not buy or sell of their free choice, but because they were forced by
circumstance, as in a food crisis, wherein scarcity over-prices the food supply, yet people buy it, because
they must eat,
In the opinion of Karl Marx, the theories of natural market-behaviour proffered by capitalist economists
were products of the way the market functioned — by the volition and initiative of the buyers and sellers of
commodities — not otherwise. If the market is the creation of a reified consciousness, which attributed an
independent economic value to symbols (objects) imposed by "the many" upon "the few", or by the
economic community upon its members, it would influence the economic theories that explain "natural
market-behaviour" in ways that promoted the fetishization of buying and selling commodities. Ultimately,
that objectification (reification) created the belief that "the economy" and "the market" are sentient entities
who act independently of the actions (choices and decisions) of the buyer and of the seller. 9! Hence,
although people might speak of the market acting as an entity, and the market exchange results from the
volition and initiative of the buyers and the sellers, in which case, Marxist commodity fetishism had
contributed to economic dumbing down. (See: Law of value)
Criticism
The Marxist theory of commodity fetishism is criticised
from the perspectives of.
= Market logic
In the book Jn Praise of Commercial Culture (2000),
the libertarian economist Tyler Cowen said that, despite
the cultural tendency to fetishes and fetishism, the
human fetishization of commodities (goods and
services) is an instance of anthropomorphism (ascribing
personal characteristics to animals and objects), and not
a philosophic feature particular to the economics of
capitalism or to the collective psychology of a capitalist
society. That people usually can distinguish between,
commercial valuations (commodities) and cultural The Tribune of the Uffizi (177278), by Johann
valuations (objets d'art), if not, quotidian life would be Z0ffany. depicts the commodity-fetishism
very difficult, because people would be unable to agree _‘ Metamorphosis of oll paintings into culture-industry
upon the value and the valuation of an object; thus, if products.
the market did not exist, it would have been impossible
for the popular masses to have access to cultural objects.2°
= Marxism as religion
ipssten wikipedia. orghkiCommady_feishism vainos Commostyfetshism- Wikipedia there encylopeta
The historian of ideas Leszek Kolakowski said that Marxism (the philosophy) and Karl Marx (the man) had
become fetishized and rendered into commodities; that such a form of intellectual reductionism could be
construed as a secular, materialist faith that substituted for supernatural religion. 2/32)
= Capitalism as religion
In the essay "Capitalism as Religion’ (1921), Walter Benjamin said that the idea of whether or not people
treat capitalism as a religion was a moot subject, because "One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to
say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by
alled religion." That the religion of capitalism is manifest in four tenets:
(i) "Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed”
(ii) "The permanence of the cult"
(iii) "Capitalism is probably the first instance of a cult that creates guilt, not atonement"
(iv) "God must be hidden from it, and may be addressed only when guilt is at its zenith" 5313341
= Commodity iconoclasm
In Portrait of a Marxist as a Young Nun, Professor Helena Sheehan said that the analogy between
commodity fetishism and religion is mistaken, because people do not worship money and commodities in
the spiritual sense, by attributing to them supernatural powers. That human, psychological beliefs about the
value-relationships inherent to commodity fetishism are not religious beliefs, and do not possess the
characteristics of spiritual beliefs. The proof of this interpretation lies in the possibility of a person's being a
religious believer, despite being aware of commodity fetishism, and being critical of its manifestations, that
toppling the Golden Calf might be integral to one's religiousness, that such iconoclasm would lead to
opposing all manifestations of idolatry.05)
See also
Pre—Marxist theories
= Simple living
Marxist theories pertinent to the theory of commodity fetishism
= Character mask = Labor theory of value
= Commodity (Marxism) = Real prices and ideal prices
= Exchange value = Reification (Marxism)
= False consciousness = Relations of production
= Fetishism = Use value
= Law of value = Value-form
Post-Marxist theories derived from the theory of commodit
fetishism
= The System of Objects, by Jean Baudrillard
= The Society of the Spectacle, by Guy Debord (full text)
= The theories of class consciousness and of reification, by Gedrg Lukaes
ipssten wikipedia. orghkiCommady_feishism sa18nos Commostyfetshism- Wikipedia there encylopeta
= The Essays of Marx's Theory of Value, by Isaak Mich Rubin
References
1. Isaak [lich Rubin said that "The theory of fetishism is, per se, the basis of Marx's entire economic system, and,
in particular, of his theory of value." — Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1990,
ps
Fine, Ben; Saad-Filho, Alfredo (2004), Marx's Capital (Ath ed.). London: Pluto Press. pp. 25-26.
Marx, Karl (1990), Capital. London: Penguin Classies. p. 165
The various references in the ‘Wood Theft’ articles to idols, animal masks, workship of animals, and fetishes,
tematic study (1841-42) of primitive religion. ‘The notebooks indicate that Marx was especially
interested in the concept of fetishism — its nature, its origins, and the difference between ancient and modern
forms of fetishism, (MEGA, Vol . 1, Part 2 p. 1151) — Sherover, Erica (1979). "The Virtue of Poverty: Marx's
Transformation of Hegel's Concept of the Poor”
(http://www. marcuse.org/herbert/people/ricky/CanInIRicky79 pdf) (PDF). Canadian Journal of Political and
Social Theory / Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale 3 (1): 53-66.
5. Du culte des diet fétiches, ou Paralléle de l'ancienne religion de I'Egypte avec la religion actuelle de Nigritie
(1760) [1] (http://gallica, bf fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1064408). The German translation was Uber den Dienst der
‘fetischengotter oder Vergleichung der alten religion Egyptians mit den heutigen Religion Nigritiens. Ubersetzt
von Christain Brandanus Hermann Pistorius. Berlin, Stralsund: Gottlieb August Lange, 1785. For a study of the
conceptual origin of fetishism, see: William Pietz, "The problem of the fetish, I", Res 9 (Spring 1985), pp. 5-17.
"The problem of the fetish, II: The origin of the fetish", Res 13 (Spring 1987), pp. 23-45; "The problem of the
fetish, ITI: Bosman’s Guinea and the enlightenment theory of fetishism", Res 16 (Autumn 1988), pp. 105-123.
The positive philosophy of Auguste Comte (1830-1842)
(http://socserv. memaster.ca/ecorvugem/3113/comte/Philosophy3. pdf)
Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (http://www. warwick ac. uk/~poseaj/deus/papers/essence8. pdf)
http://www. marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1842/07/10.htm
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, On religion. Atlanta: Scholars, 1982, p. 22.
Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844", in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3
Moscow: Progress, 1975, p. 312 [2] (http://www marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs. htm)
11, Lawrence Krader (ed.), The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx: Studies of Morgan, Phear, Maine, Lubbock
sn; Van Goreum, 1972, p. 342f
12. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, chapter 17 (1857)
(http://www. marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch17. htm)
13. Karl Marx,Results of the Immediate Process of Production, appendix in Capital Volume 1. Penguin edition,
1976, p, 983.
14, For more details, see Boer, Roland (2010). "That Hideous Pagan Idol: Marx, Fetishism and Graven Images”
Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory 38 (1): 93-116. doi:10.1080/03017600903454413
(https://dx. dot. org/10,1080%2F0301 7600903454413)
15. Adam Simth, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book 1, Chapter 2 "Of the
Principle which gives occasion to the Division of Labour" [3] (http://geolib. com/smith adam/won1-02.html)
16. "... the paid and unpaid portions of labour are inseparably mixed up with each other, and the nature of the whole
transaction is completely masked by the intervention of a contract and the pay received at the end of the week” —
Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, part 9.(4] (http://swww marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-
profit/ch02.htm#c7) "Since Lassalle's death, there has asserted itself in our party the scientific understanding that
‘wages are not what they appear to be — namely, the value, or price, of labor — but only a masked form for the
value, or price, of labor power". — Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), part 2 (emphases
added). [5] (http://www marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch02.htm) cf. the Resultate manuscript in
Capital, Volume I, Penguin edition, p. 1064, where Marx uses the word "vertuscht" (covered up)
17. Marx, Capital, Volume IIT, Penguin edition, p. 956 (translation corrected to the German edition).
18. [6] (http://www artandpopularculture,com/Du_Fétichisme_dans_'amour) The Fetish in Love (Le fétichisme dans
Vamour: Ia vie psychique des micro-organismes, l'intensité des images mentales, etc., 1887)
19. "Just as the capitalist system continuously produces and reproduces itself economically on higher levels, the
psiten wikipedia orgwikiCommediy fetishism 1at6
reflect Mane2n01s
20.
21
22,
23
24.
25
26
21.
28,
29,
CCommeaiyfshism - Wikipedia the fee eneylopeta
structure of reification progressively sinks more deeply, more fatefully, and more definitively into the
consciousness of Man." Gyorgy Lukics, History and Class-Consciousness London: Merlin Press, 1971, p. 93.
Cluley, R. and Dunne, S. (2012) From Commodity Fetishism to Commodity Narcissism, Marketing Theory,
12(3)
Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality and Advertising in Capitalist
Society. Introduced by Stuart Hall, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
"Paying for Pensions: Affording Old Age”, BBC News, 13 September 2010
(http://www. bbe, co, uk/earibbean/news/story/2010/09/100910_pensionschemes. shtml)
"Global financial markets: entering a new era", McKinsey Global Institute, September 2009, p. 9.
Sce further e.g, Jan Toporowski’s analysis (http://www monthlyreview.org/10090 ltoporowski. php)
Marc Linder, Reification and the consciousness of the critics of political economy. Copenhagen: Rhodos, 1975
and subsequent works.
The Role of Law in Economic Theory: Essays on the Fetishism of Commodities" (1985), by Duncan Kennedy,
The American University Law Review Volume 34, pp. 939-1001. [7]
(http://duncankennedy.net/documents/The%20Role%200!%20Law%20in%20Eeon%20Thought_Essays%200n%2
Othe%20Fetishism%2001%20Commodities pdf)
Carl Menger, Principles of Economics (1871), chapter 3 (http://mises.org/etexts/menger/three.asp)
See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, Chapter 5 (http://virtuescience.com/ethicsS. html#5.5)
Roosevelt, Frank (1975). "Cambridge Economics as Commodity Fetishism". Review of Radical Political
Economics 7 (4): 1-32. doi:10.1177/048661347500700402
(https: //dx. doi. org/10. 1177%2F048661347500700402). Reprinted in Nell, Edward J. (1980). Growth, profits,
and property: essays in the revival of political economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0521223962.
In praise of commercial culture (2000), by Tyler Cowen. Harvard University Press.
When he was a Marxist, Leszek Kolakowski published nine essays in the book Kultura i fetysze (Culture and
Fetishism, Warsaw: Paiistwowe Wydawnictwow Naukowe, 1967). The English translations of his works are
Toward a Marxist Humanism, Marxism and Beyond, and A Leszek Kolakowski Reader. Afterwards, when
Kolakowski quit being a Communist, he noted the many parallels between Marxism and a religious faith.
2. Louis Proyect titled his weblog "The unrepentant Marxist"[8] (http:/“louisproyect. wordpress.com).
"Capitalism as Religion", by Walter Benjamin, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. | 1913-1926.
Michael W. Jennings (ed,), Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press, 2004 p. 259.
[9] (http://lenieney. blogspot.com/2008/12/notes-on-capitalism-as-religion. html) No Useless Leniency weblog,
"Notes on Capitalism as Religion" (17 December 2008)
Portrait of a Marxist as a Young Nun, by Helena Sheehan (http://webpages.dcu.ie/~sheehanh/portrait, htm)
Further reading
Sandel, Michael (2012). What money can't buy : the moral limits of markets. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374203030
Bottomore, Tom (1991). A Dictionary of Marxist thought. Oxford, UK Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell
Reference. ISBN 9780631180821
Debord, Guy (2009). The Society of the Spectacle. Eastbourne: Soul Bay Press
ISBN 9780955955334.
= Fine, Ben (2010), Marx's Capital. London & New York: Pluto Press. ISBN 0745330169
= Harvey, David (2010). A companion to Marx's Capital. London New York: Verso.
ISBN 1844673596.
Lukaes, Gyorgy (1971). History and Class Consciousness : studies in Marxist dialectics. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262620208
Marx, Karl (1981). Capital :Volume 1: A critique of political economy. London New York, N.Y
Penguin Books in association with New Left Review. ISBN 9780140445688
Douglas, Mary (1996). The world of goods : towards an anthropology of consumption : with a new
ipssten wikipedia. orghkiCommady_feishism 1918e2n01s CCommesty feishism - Wikipedia, the fee enoyclopsdia
introduction, London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415130479.
External links
= Capital, Chapter 1, Section 4 — The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof
(http://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4)
= All of Chapter One - Marx's logical presentation (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works!1867-
el/ch01 htm)
= (Isaac Rubin's commentary on Marx) (http://www. marxists.org/subject/economy/rubin/)
= "The Reality behind Commodity Fetishism" (http://www sicetnon,org/modules.php?
op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&topic_id=2&page_id=77)
= David Harvey, Reading Marx's Capital (http://davidharvey.org), Reading Marx's Capital - Class 2,
Chapters 1-2, ‘The Commodity (http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/marxs-capital-class-02/) (video
lecture)
= Biene Baumeister,Die Marxsche Kritik des Fetischismus (outline in German) (http://seltsamer-
zusammenschluss.org/downloads/Die_Marxsche_Kritik_des_Fetischismus_Handout.pdf)
= Understanding Capitalism Part IV: Capitalism, Culture and Society
(http://www rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_culture.htm)
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