Commodity Fetishism

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Marx’s argument
Importance of this concept
Conclusion
Works Cited:

Introduction

To Karl Marx, commodity fetishism is a critic of the political economy that refers to the mystery of human relations, which may be as a result of economic exchange when social ties between them are exhibited as, arbitrated by and changed into objectified relations across objects, that is, commodities and currency.

Products, the main characteristic of capitalism, are mysterious objects; their character as commodities fails to add up because all humans produce goods through all goods cannot be defined as commodities.

Commodities get their strange character by market trade: Producers do not fix the value for these commodities by their utility value but by their ability to be traded for other objects.

The labor used to produce these commodities is also priced not for its worth, but for its ability to establish trade, thus human labor on its own is a commodity, which can be exchanged for money.

The various types of energy are to be valued since they can be traded for the same value of commodities; hence the social nature of work implies that material relations across factors of production.

The social relations which establish these people’s equal value (the price of labor that they represent) vanishes from their conscience (Agger, 89). Therefore, people see the market as a set of relations among objects rather than as a set of relationships between each other.

Marx’s argument

Marx explains the difference between use-value and exchange-value. Use-value is a measurement of the utility of the commodity, while the exchange value is the amount the merchandise will earn on the market.

The money acts as the accepted medium of exchange, and it brings different uneven commodities into relations of equal opportunity with one another. The exchange value is ascertained by the ratio of labor times presently required to make that commodity.

This is what Marx denotes as the social division of labor and the composite relations of inter-reliance, which characterizes capitalism.

Nevertheless, these composite relations aren’t apparent to people involved in market trade who notice only the ensuing relations between objects, but for people who (by mistake though for their interests) see these relations as self-propelling, and as self-regulating instead of being reliant on the social specialization of production roles, and the relations it creates across various owners of means of production.

According to Marx, in capitalism, production has power over us instead of being vice versa. Hence, goods seem to be interdependent of those who produce them and seem to have mastery over them.

He also argues that it reduces human labor to an abstraction. As seen in religions (he gives an example of Christianity) that reduces humans to “an abstract man” (Balibar, 154).

Commodity fetishism is a character of any given economic system because these objects of trade occur in various ways since centuries back, however to Marx, commodity fetishism looms more with capitalism, because it is based only on the “production of commodities using commodities.”

Thus, market forces affect nearly all things that people do, contrary to the pre-capitalist economies where markets were not liberalized, and people never experienced this.

Importance of this concept

This concept was useful in explaining the world’s history at the time.

Due to this fetishism nature, people tended to behave and act as though the object had significant control over their actions therefore from their kind of behavior, it was no doubt that the society believed that the object had a considerable power or influence over them.

Due to this belief, society thought that the purpose had superhuman or intrinsic powers that no man could have (Morrison, 361). Nevertheless, the power was not intrinsic, only that the society tended to believe so.

From the concept we learn that the society believed that certain activities or actions could result in harm in the community while others could result in positive results; therefore they believed that the objects were under the influence of good and evil spirits which dictated the outcome of any activity.

Thus certain objects could not be touched or used without authority while others were just at the disposal of only authorized people in the given society.

From this perception, the same concept as argued by Karl Marx is said to apply in business or trade whereby people attributed certain powers in trade to certain objects or influences.

Therefore, society behaved in a manner suggesting that these objects had real powers and it was a natural phenomenon. They, therefore, held the traded objects in high regard.

Hence from the above, the society looked at the relationship from an angle of the things/ objects being exchanged due to the belief of the enormous power being possessed by the objects.

Thus the objects defined the social relationship in the society. Hence there was no real value in other social aspects apart from that associated with the exchange of these objects.

Conclusion

In conclusion, through this concept, Marx tries to show that the goods market can function effectively, with people exchanging without valuing the actual character of the market, and all that matters is the actual character of the society they live in.

Actual ,details about the market are not needed to engage in the market, and the means engaged could be altered to facilitate a favorable perception on them.

However, to Marx, these mysteries will continue until production is turned into a “free human association,” governed by the employees on their own.

Works Cited:

Agger, Ben. Social theories: an introduction. Nashville: Westview, 1998. Print.

Balibar, Etienne. Philosophy of Marx. Nashville: Verso, 1995. Print.

Morrison, Kenneth. Formations of modern social thought. Houston: Sage. 2006. Print.

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