Presentation

The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof - Karl Marx

I will be talking about Karl Marx’s text ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the secret thereof,’ from the book ‘Capital’.

Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and together with Friedrich Engels, established Marxism.

Marxism is a theory initially inspired by Hegel who believed that the world was constructed by people’s ideas. Marx took this theory and turned it around, saying instead, that people were a result of their environment.

Marxist theory is based on revolution. Marx believed that the current capitalist system would come to its destruction because the methods of production would gradually lead to an extreme concentration of wealth. The bourgeoisies would shrink and the proletariat would grow, until the underclass had no choice but to revolt against their exploiters.

The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.

In this section of Capital, Marx discusses the irrational way that people in the west view products. To give an example from contemporary culture, the reason why, say, a Gucci handbag has the human characteristics of being glamorous and sophisticated, despite the fact that it is just pieces of material stitches together with the purpose of making carrying things easier, and why the exchange value (or the price) reflects this irrational personality, instead of the actual materials and labour time that went into making it.

The idea of fetish was originally used by Emmanuel Kant to describe the way that people project themselves onto religion. Marx applied this theory to commodity.

Capitalist society is based on the production and trade of goods. Meaning that the relationships that people have with each other are based in the workplace, “…from the moment that men in anyway work for one another, their labour assumes a social form.” Because people’s social relationships are based on the production of goods, Marx argues that these social relationships are projected onto these goods, turning them into commodities. He also says that “the value –relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connexion with their physical properties.” You pay for the personality of the product, not the actual product. *

Because all human interaction revolves around labour, and because objects have a personality, Marx states that the roles of people and objects has been changed- there are “material relations between persons, and social relations between things.” And that it is the exchange values of things rather than the value of manufacturing it (or even the use value) “that converts every product into a social hieroglyphs.”

In conclusion Marx looks back to primitive cultures that valued an object only by how useful it was and writes “ The life process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.”

Marxism in the modern world.

Times have changed a great deal since Marx. There wasn’t the revolution that Marx predicted. According to Herbert Marcuse, in ‘1 dimensional man’, this is because “advanced industrial society” creates false needs, integrating people into the system of production and consumption. Because of the mass media and advertising, people believe that they must own lots of pointless possessions. By working and buying these things people believe they are bettering themselves and so are happy being exploited.

Although the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, proletariat and bourgeoisies no longer exist as two separate classes. Workers get paid better, have the chance of promotion, and can own shares to receive portions of companies profit. The working class have been successfully integrated into capitalist society. There is no longer revolutionary potential in the west.

Marx’s ideas about commodity fetish are, however, still extremely valid. Georg Lukacs expands on Marx’s ideas when he talks about ‘reification’, which is essentially the same as fetish but with subtle differences.

Reification


The consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had human or living existence and abilities

Separating something from it’s original context and placing it in another context – giving it powers and attributes that in truth it doesn’t have.

Objects are turned into subject and subjects are turned into objects.

People are just blank canvasses, and possessions paint our characteristics. With out possessions we are nobody.

We are judged on the labels we wear, the car we drive and the shops we shop in. We can change our image, and therefore their personality, on a daily basis.

A man they could walk into high street clothing store and decide that they want to be ‘punk.’ They would buy a t-shirt made from distressed fabric with messy homemade style graphics, a pair of tight jeans and a studded belt. Neither the man, nor the shop, are concerned with what punk actually was, or is, they are only concerned with it on an aesthetic level.

According to Guy Debord, “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”

A good example to look at when discussing commodity fetish, or reification is Adidas. Adidas has got practically all areas covered when it comes to the footwear and clothing markets (as well as toiletries, electricals, etc). Adidas is an extremely successful brand because of its image. Adidas is more an idea than a pair of shoes. Its this reason why Adidas can put a their logo on anything and people will buy it because they recognise it as Adidas. One of the most interesting things about Adidas is that they have a different image in different markets. Different Adidas products connote different characteristics.

Adidas can even manage to sell t-shirts, like this one, with pictures of trainers on them.

Looking at it objectively it is completely absurd, but the person that is buying the t-shirt doesn’t see it as just a picture of a shoe, they see the idea that the shoe has come to represent.

Brands and names are used to categorise people into target markets, most decisions we make have been reduced to consumer decisions, and due to globalisation, are completely pointless. Whatever you believe in, whatever your tastes are or whatever moral code you live by, you are just a member of a target market, even if you are anti-capitalist, the capitalists have an option for you. This is because these are purely aesthetic options. For example, you decide that you’re opposed to the increasingly intensive production systems of a capitalist culture. You decide to buy Green and Blacks chocolate because it is Fair Trade, and you buy your toiletries from The Body Shop, because they don’t test on animals. You’ve spent a bit over the odds, but you know it’s worth it for a clear conscience. The thing you don’t realise is that Green and Blacks is owned by Cadbury, a company that in the past has been accused of using sweat shop labour, and The Body Shop is owned by L’Oreal, which is a massive company that tests on animals. L’Oreal also own 26% of Nestle, who in turn own a whole host of other brands. The majority of the market place is owned by just a few brands, effectively making consumer decisions pointless

Conclusion

I would like to begin my conclusion with a quote from Ludwig Feuerbach.

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence…truth is considered profane and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced, in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.”

However, most people aren’t idiots, they know they are being conned, they know they don’t really need to buy yet another pair of shoes, but hey its doing no harm, and they are really nice shoes.

The majority of people in the west have enough money to live in relative comfort. To realise the true harm that capitalism does we have too look further than the people of the west.

The idea of their being two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is still there. The people in the west, despite their differences, are the bourgeoisie. It’s the sweat shop workers of the third world, the millions of animals kept in barren cages and polluted natural world that is the modern proletariat.

Modern production methods mean that every time you buy a pair of jeans, chances are they will have been made in a sweatshop where people work 15 hours a day and still can’t afford to feed their families. Whenever you buy food with egg in it, it will have come from a hen that lives in a cage the size of a piece of A4 paper, and had it’s beak cut of without anaesthetic, and everything you buy will have someway polluted the environment.