Reading Capital, continued (thread #4) Fetishism...

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
01-16-2010, 07:27 PM

pretty sure it kept me from getting laid alot of times

Truthfully, I was being facetious. It seems like we've talked the subject into oblivion and we're only on paragraph 2

[blindpig]

Two Americas
01-16-2010, 08:43 PM

Great discussion, everyone. Very helpful.

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anaxarchos
01-16-2010, 11:51 PM

Section 4.The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1...

Marx now answers with what has been said above (although with a little more economy). The mystery arises from "this form itself".


Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the products.

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses. In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.

This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them.


"...the existence of the things quâ commodities, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things."

In a world defined by commodity production, it is almost superfluous to add that this very same "fantastic form" colors the way in which human beings see the rest of their world and their connection to it...

Examples?

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
01-16-2010, 11:55 PM

If you will wait just a hair longer, Marx does some serious explainin' of all this, at the high altitude at which I took your question.. I will do my best to answer the questions you have left, when the old man stops for a breather.

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blindpig
01-17-2010, 05:01 AM

Use value becomes secondary, non-economic values become irrelevant.

A river, which may provide a multitude of human uses and services, is subjugated to that purpose which provides the most exchange value, regardless of all of the other value lost.

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BitterLittleFlower
01-17-2010, 09:28 AM

unless you think it will help all; I do pick up enough stuff to be practical, I think! As I said before, I really do seem to have a learning disability regarding economic theory, maybe that's a good thing! ;D

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BitterLittleFlower
01-17-2010, 09:32 AM

Tech fetishism? Funny anyway (and its not the fake bud light commercial):

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/s ... d_piece_of

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chlamor
01-18-2010, 11:11 AM

I've been carrying this bit around in my wallet for a year. A friend sent it:

"Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity--and does in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally...
the object which labour produces-- labour's product-- confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer... labour's realization is it's objectification... in the conditions dealt with by the political economy this realization of labour appears as loss of reality for the workers;...

So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the dominion of his product, capital...

It is the same in religion. The more man puts in God, the less he retains in himself..."

[blindpig]

BitterLittleFlower
01-18-2010, 01:26 PM

I asked a while ago about antiques/collectibles as having very little use value (aesthetic value is or is not a use value?) but seem to have an assigned economic value?? also they are imbued by the buyer with a quality placed on them by the buyer as maybe, for example, he romanticizes the object due to its maker, say Gustav Stickley? (a laborer being commodicized here?) Kind of beauty lying in the eye of the beholder, but that beauty is enhanced by a perceived value?

I think maybe the video I posted in #55 might be an example??

If I am way off here, just say so, I'm feeling brave enough to try to souse things out in public...

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curt_b
01-18-2010, 03:01 PM

BLF, Aesthetic value is a prime example of fetishism. The value of the object remains the labor congealed (there's something about that term that strikes me as odd, but every time I try to use a synonym I hear about it), but the typical apologies for the innate value of an antique or work of art are among the most extreme.

In these fields the genius of the producer and/or the scarcity of the item are the leading explanations for the relative value of the item. Some time ago Dahlgren (I think) commented on his feeling that looking at a well made barn was a more valuable experience for him than looking at a beautiful painting of a barn. In fact, the abstract human labor congealed in both the barn and the painting determine their values. On the market, however, the academic or commercial status of the artist, the paintings age, which galleries or museums have exhibited them, which collections are they in etc. are understood to determine exchange value. The history of art is a tale of academics and merchants writing polemics as vicious as any commie, to identify which work(s) is truly worthy of high value. A more serious approach would be view it all equally based the amount of labor expended.

The objection to this, is commonly, that it makes no sense to pay a bad artist as much as a good one or value a bad painting as much as a good one. It doesn't. Nor does it make much sense to value a product that works, the same as one of the same type that doesn't. There has to be a way to recognize social useful products of all types (including art), and socially useful work. What it is I don't know, but it's got to be done.

I'd start talking about the need to recognize the relative onerous character of different types of labor, but there's a normally Nice Guy around here that yells at me whenever I do.