Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Socialist Progressives
Related: About this forumThe Law of Value 2: The Fetishism of Commodities
Last edited Thu Dec 22, 2011, 08:59 AM - Edit history (1)
http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/the-law-of-value-2-the-fetishism-of-commodities/
This process whereby the social relations between people take the form of relations between things Marx calls reification. Reification helps explain why it is that in a capitalist society things appear to take on the characteristics of people. Inanimate objects spring to life endowed with a value that seems to come from the object itself. We say a book is worth 20 dollars, a sweater worth 25 dollars. But this value doesnt come from the sweater itself. You cant cut open the sweater and find $25 inside. This $25 is an expression of the relation between this sweater and all of the other commodities in the market. And these commodities are just the material forms of a social labor process coordinated through market exchange. It is because people organize their labor through the market that value exists.
The illusion that value comes from the commodity itself and not from the social relations behind it is a fetish. A capitalist society is full of such illusions. Money appears to have god-like qualities, yet this is only so because it is an object which is used to express the value of all other commodities. Profit appears to spring out of exchange itself, yet Marx worked hard to explain how profit actually originates in production through the unequal relations between capital and labor in the workplace. Rent appears to grow out of the soil, yet Marx was adamant that rent actually comes from the appropriation of value created by labor. We see these fetishistic ideas in modern day mainstream economic theory in the idea that value comes from the subjective experience between a consumer and a commodity, and that capital creates value by itself.
Yet the theory of commodity fetishism isnt just a theory of illusion. Its not that the entire world is an illusion, reality existing somewhere far below the surface, always out of sight. The illusion is real. Commodities really do have value. Money really does have social power. Individual people really are powerless and material structures really do have social power. There is not a real world of production existing below the surface in which the relations between producers are direct. Relations between producers are only indirect, only coordinated through the mystifying world of commodities.
Conclusion:
The theory of commodity fetishism is central to Marxs theory of value and its one of the things that sharply distinguishes him from his predecessors. Adam Smith and David Ricardo both held that prices were explained by labor time. But Marxs value theory is much more than a theory of price. It is a theory of the way the social relations between people take on material forms that then act back upon and shape these social relations. Labor takes the form of value embodied in commodities. Money price becomes the universal expression of this value. The pursuit of money as an end itself dominates society. Means of production become capital. Money, commodities and capital, as representatives of social value, become independent forces in their own right out of the control of society. The law of value is the law of these forces. Attempts to exert some control over these forces through monopoly or the state always become enmeshed in the social antagonisms of value.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
0 replies, 578 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (3)
ReplyReply to this post