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

[blindpig]

blindpig
01-13-2010, 01:09 PM

You might recall a conversation we had about Cuba, how the government was having a hard time filling management positions for the same pay as regular workers. So Cuba gave the managers better pay as an expedient. Goes back to the revolution being executed in phases, as conditions allow. It is I think a real reason for the resistance of the middle class liberals, their pay rate, their stuff, is them, that is their fetish.

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
01-13-2010, 01:41 PM

At a certain point in human history, humans primarily produce commodities which are nothing other than the same old products of labor, but now produced for exchange. The basis for that exchange is a reduction of the labor time it took to produce each commodity but in a strange social form: undifferentiated "abstract" human labor. In order to make such a calculation, all human labor is stripped of its real attributes in order to create a socially defined commonality measured only by its duration.

Now, take a step back... The above evolves from the trade in the products of labor, which was for the longest time incidental or strictly limited. Yet, at some point, exchange implies the production of commodities, or production explicitly for exchange. The evolution of "markets" allows this change but the motive force of this transformation is that it is a method for producing surplus value... i.e. a method whereby some live by the labor of others. Commodities are produced by free laborers who are paid for their labor, but the price of that labor is completely different from the amount of value which that labor creates. The difference is the foundation of commodity production. Commodities themselves appear in the starring role but, in truth, they are mere vessels in a social dance whereby "proprietors" (of capital) happily expropriate the actual producers.

Now, take a step back... The expropriation above is only apparent retrospectively. It is not sufficient that commodities be produced for the surplus value to be realized. They must be exchanged (or sold). The original participants, the owner of Capital, and the producer who has no means to produce on his own and therefore must sell his labor power to survive... these actors are finished with their respective "duties" while "their" commodities go forth into the world of buying and selling. In this world, the commodities themselves owe nothing to their own origins, other than a passing acknowledgement that they were indeed, once, produced. Now their "value" appears as something "innate". More, it is the inanimate commodities which appear as the active parties, whirling in circulation, while the original producers now act as passive spectators.

What has happened is that the commodities - objects - have been endowed with inherent value or powers by their creators. That is the very definition of a "fetish". From the Latin: facticius ("artificial") and facere, ("to make").

Where does this strange perspective of ours come from? Marx says in the very next paragraph that it comes from the form itself (commodities).

It is not commodities, but we who find ourselves standing on our head... or, at least, seeing the world from that position.

[blindpig]

Dhalgren
01-13-2010, 02:43 PM

artificial relationships? OK, I will try not to hold up anybody on this. Thanks. I will stick my hand up if I lose the track...

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Kid of the Black Hole
01-13-2010, 05:06 PM

because this really IS the crux of fetishism.

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BitterLittleFlower
01-13-2010, 07:16 PM

I need this to be explained and questioned as much as you all can take it...I'm not even sure enough to ask questions...

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Dhalgren
01-14-2010, 07:00 AM

Anax says: "All of the traits of commodity production exist previously, without ever producing "grotesque ideas" from the "wooden brains" of inanimate objects. This fetishism is something unique to commodity production."

So, before capitalism when a human and/or his/her family produced excess items for barter, they were using their own labor to produce one item (pottery, basketry, food, etc.) to exchange directly for the labor-product of another (pottery, basketry, food, etc.). In other words human number one is exchanging his/her labor directly with human number two, exchanging labor for labor in a (hopefully) equitable way. An exchange of human need for human need.

But with the rise of capitalism, all of a human's labor was bent to the production of one thing, no longer an exchange of need for need, but for the wealth inherent in the production itself. Might this be part of those "grotesque ideas"?

Close? Way off?

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Kid of the Black Hole
01-14-2010, 07:15 AM

I think it would be interesting to revisit earlier sections and ask if these statements are true.


before capitalism when a human and/or his/her family produced excess items for barter


In other words human number one is exchanging his/her labor directly with human number two


exchanging labor for labor in a (hopefully) equitable way. An exchange of human need for human need.

The reason I highlight these quotes are that

1. Humans didn't individually trade with each other even in precapitalist society outside of a complex network of social relations and highly governed interactions

2. There was still a calculus of social labor constantly being done before the onset of capitalist society, and it certainly did not reduce to "need for need"


no longer an exchange of need for need, but for the wealth inherent in the production itself.

It was always about extracting the wealth "inherent in the production process", I don't think that is what differentiates capitalist society from preceding modes of production at all. If it was, then class struggle would have to emerge and accompany capitalism without preceding it.

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Dhalgren
01-14-2010, 07:42 AM

is not necessarily the same "thing". In many ancient societies production was based on slave labor. And serfs and wage laborers in the middle ages were not the same and did not "translate" into the workforce of capital in the same way. To talk about "production" pre and post capitalism as being the same thing, I think is wrong. There has to be a place for the motivation of production. Human beings do not produce (as human beings) for the purpose of acquiring wealth alone (or perhaps not a all). The difference between producing on a level of human need (the individual human being) and of producing on a mass scale (the capitalist owner) for the acquisition of wealth has to be seen as different. Engels says as much in his book on the English Working Class. The distinction is not on a society-wide level or on the level of an historical epoch, but on the level of, "Why is this person working? What is she working for?"
As Anax said, all of the conditions for this "fetishism" existed before capitalism. What was the cause of this fetishism? What changed between the pre-capitalist and capitalist eras to produce this fetishism? Of course all of these things are social relationships - that is a given. But when speaking of social relationships what are we talking about? Aren't we talking about the relationships between individuals on the large group scale? Social relationships are between me and you, us and them, "we" are made up of a whole bunch of "I's".
If the motivation for production is not at the heart of this thing, then where do you see the arising of this fetishism from?
I am willing to be schooled...

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curt_b
01-14-2010, 08:53 AM

PC, says a lot of this in Reply #3, just turning on its side a bit.

One small part of this, is the point in time that surplus value is expropriated from an object. It appears as though it at the moment of exchange, when money, goods, etc. come as wealth to the capitalist. In reality, it is at the moment when the abstract labor has become fully embedded in the object.

In the first case, the exchange of objects ignores the human actors involved in production, distribution, etc, making it seem that the objects have value in and of themselves. Any political or social entity that accepts, and, even more, organizes economic processes around this idea, embraces commodities as fetishes.

It doesn't matter whether it's a free laborer, serf or slave who contributed their labor to the production of a commodity. If surplus value is realized at the moment of exchange, then these inanimate objects must have some living component that make them social actors. Of course they don't. We watch them interact, and presume they make vital decisions about our lives, as though they had brains, when of course, they don't.

Fetishism arises from a consideration of exchange or trade value that transcends human labor.

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Dhalgren
01-14-2010, 09:03 AM

Commodities, as products of human labor, is the difference between pre-capitalist and capitalist society. Does the fetish arise from the motivation of production or from the nature of commodities? And the nature of commodities arises in the expropriation of labor?