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

[blindpig]

curt_b
01-07-2010, 01:12 PM

Thanks for the reply

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
01-07-2010, 01:15 PM

so I think I have gotten some clarity by doing that. But I am assuming that Marx's use of the term "fetish" is the classical usage meaning something like an object or construct held to be of preternatural power to help or impede (as the case may be) in the service of the fetishist. Is it through this kind of construct that the fetishism Marx speaks of "bleeds" out into the society? Or are we so warped by the primacy of this pervasive and basic fetish that we are all but incapable of any other form of social intercourse? And isn't this something more than "just" private property" or "ownership"? Doesn't this go to the very nature of the consciousness of human beings that this society produces?

Or am I seeing too much in this?

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
01-07-2010, 01:29 PM

But there isn't some fetish that fetishism radiates out from. Instead, EVERYTHING is fetishized societally, which entails that it will be fetishized in the consciousness of men.

Plato's Cave is pretty instructive. Instead of watching the real actors (ourselves), we see only the shadows -- our own shadows -- which is congealed dead labor ie "stuff"

As a really obvious example, consider when people assert that the stock market affects the economy. But the stock market is transparently a relationship of buying and selling by traders. Not all of the relationships are so transparent but they are all basically the same in how they play out.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
01-07-2010, 01:54 PM

has had a fetish at it heart? Is some form of fetish necessary for the establishment of human society? I would not think so (but am willing to entertain the idea). That seems to be the idea coming from your statement, "there isn't some fetish that fetishism radiates out from". I would think that it is, in fact, a foundational fetishism that makes capitalist society what it is; and that, in turn, substantiates the fetishistic nature of all of our relationships. How else could it be? I think this area is important to "flesh-out"...

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
01-07-2010, 04:06 PM

because our social relationships are upside down/inverted. Thats a major paraphrase but Marx makes an epigram somewhere like that.

Its the "props of the age" as Anax calls them. All of our social relationships and collective powers are put in motion for the aggrandizement of a few and directed by those same few while those who work are denied access to their own labor. This is what we see and internalize it as simply the facts of life, how the world works, the way things are and *fill in your own cliche here*

The rest flows from there. Is there a psychological component that exists as a substratum of every society? I suppose so, but its a derivative effect, not a primary one and its certainly not the same over time as various modes of production emerge and go through their lifespan (which is an important part of what Hegel helps us to see).

For fetishism as we're discussing it to come into being you really have to have the same extremely developed productive powers necessary for the circulation and perpetuation of capital itself. They go hand in hand I think.

Consider that during feudal times, it is likely that almost everyone considered a caste system intrinsic to "human nature". Some are nobly born, some born base.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
01-07-2010, 04:19 PM

In capitalist society, surplus value is created at the point of production but realized only after the commodities are sold. The latter occurs at the end of a process of circulation which differs in time and place from the original expropriation of surplus value and serves to mask the underlying "social relations". These "relations" are, at bottom, quite similar to previous ones of slaveholder and slave, serf and master, freeman and lord, etc., but they don't appear as such because the expropriation is not immediate and direct but appears as subsequent and indirect. The complexity of the process of circulation only furthers this disconnect. Thus, the actual social connection between worker and capitalist only appears in its full glory, retrospectively. In place of the naked exploitation of one by the other, we see what appears as "fair exchange" between them which nevertheless spits out surplus value (and a lot of it) after a while, at the other end of the process.

One aspect of this disconnection is that it stands on its head the underlying social reality: commodities exchange with one another according to their intrinsic attributes(really?), capital grows through the movement of the "markets", etc. Commodities themselves appear to take on the attributes that actually belong to their producers and "owners". Inanimate objects gain the active role while the actual humans are reduced to passive spectators.

This last is what causes fetishism. Its projection onto life in general is guaranteed to to confuse the situation. It is not the dictatorship of people but of things which is inevitably presented... almost as a force of nature.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
01-07-2010, 04:28 PM

but isn't it the accepted observation that the society is responsible for the consciousness of the citizen and not the other way around? I do not necessarily agree that some type of fetish is at the heart of every society (I may be wrong, but I am not convinced). The concept that the society molds the character and understanding of those within that society, I think, is a given; it is the idea of the "fetish" that I think may be unique to capitalism? When power relationships exist within a society, it does not, I think, of necessity, lead to the development of a fetishistic existence and relationships within that society. I am just thinking out loud, here, but it seems that this type of dehumanization is "capitalistic" in nature. The caste system in and of itself does not lead to members of the same casts treating each other in a fetishistic manner (using the classic definition of "fetishism") I suppose this is where I was going...

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
01-07-2010, 04:33 PM

so I was trying to simplify things a little. Check Anax's response as well because that is probably a better approach to answering you (besides which, I am more offering thoughts because I am not qualified to be the Answer Man )

The difference is when you turned over a portion of your crop to the Church, you knew exactly what you were surrending and understood it for what it was, an expropriation. Today we say that unemployment is the result of a sales slump. Granted, that is one of the more easy to crack absurdities that abound, but there are a limitless number, and many are so highly ingrained in our thinking that we can't even see them. Chlamor takes this on from a different angle when he points out how thorougly ideology is embdedded into language. Even innocuous things like saying a football team "capitalized" on the opponents turnover.

Also, I am not arguing for any kind of enduring perma-fetishism. I really don't know about that either way, it occurs to me that it would be hard to understand capitalist society observing from without, so we are equally limited in that regard when we try to view previous forms of social organization retrospectively.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
01-07-2010, 05:06 PM

"This last is what causes fetishism. Its projection onto life in general is guaranteed to to confuse the situation. It is not the dictatorship of people but of things which is inevitably presented... almost as a force of nature."

This is how working class/poor people can so easily identify with the Owners! This is how so many gentrified yuppies can look all big-eyed and can't understand all the "bitterness" and "resentment" that is so often expressed! This particular fetish has so displaced the realities it represents, that citizens of the society cannot even see it anymore, cannot recognize it as representing human beings!

Is that close? Jesus...

[blindpig]

Two Americas
01-07-2010, 07:08 PM

Good stuff, eh?