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What is Commodity Fetishism? | Karl Marx | Keyword
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- Опубліковано 18 сер 2024
- In this episode, I outline what Karl Marx means with the term, "Commodity Fetishism."
(*Note* At around 15:30 I meant to say Smith and Ricardo, not Marx and Ricardo).
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Unbelievable. Was just looking around the web trying unsuccessfully to understand this concept. Perfect timing.
Awesome 😊
completely agree. I was also totally confused by this idea, and now I feel like I am finally starting to get it
This is the first time I have really understood this concept. I thought I got it before, and was confused as to why it was considered so crucial. But I get it now! I love you!
It is my belief that Marx also used the term in describing people's actual evaluation of commodities. The term derives from religious fetishism, where religious people put an inherent value on objects that represented saints, prophets, God, etc. I.e., transferred to Capitalism, in our alienated state, where we are bits and pieces of the production chain, we are also blind to the whole process of value creation, thus, we impose intrinsic value on goods instead.
Exactly what is _"value"_ referring to in the notion of inherent value? Calling this to value something that is not really useful is a dangerous route to go. Who is it that decides what is useful or not, what we need and do not need? A route that usually ends up with a dictator constantly lowering the definition of what we need, as production, development, and the economy stagnates. It is not difficult to predict the rhetoric: _"What are you complaining about?! Monks in the Himalayas live on a handful of rice a day and a sheet around their bodies. What do you mean you need more than a pair of shoes?! Don't be greedy!"_
Value and what we need are on a margin, i.e., when we have achieved one value we look to achieve the next on the margin. Just as one can expand one's needs indefinitely, one can, so to speak, reduce them down to almost nothing as well. It is this so-called sharp distinction between what we need and do not need that leads to erroneous notions such as _from each according to his ability to each according to his needs._ If implemented in reality, it will cause people to minimize their capabilities, and maximize their needs, until everything collapses. These concepts are not binary, as in, either or.
Value is meaningless without one who values. Which makes intrinsic value meaningless, because it would mean value without a valuer. Value must also have a purpose, have a goal, which once again makes inherent value meaningless since value cannot exist independent of its purpose. Which brings us to the question, regarding value in commodity fetishism, _value for whom?_ and, _value for what?_ I.e., value cannot exist in a vacuum as a floating abstraction.
So when people value an item, it's not because they think the value is inherent, they value it because it meets certain needs people have, whether it's memories, social status, or other things, is irrelevant. It is still _values_ and they serve a purpose.
This tendency to place values and needs on a scale from exalted and noble values to mundane and vulgar values is something that is typical of religions and collectivist ideologies. There is no end to how harmful our values are, according to priests and intellectuals. We do not know our own best, we suffer from alienation and false consciousness, they declare, and just as we should surrender to priests in the past, we should surrender to intellectuals today.
Hearing Marxists talk about _Commodity Fetishism_ is like hearing pretentious artists explain why a canvas with solid color paint is art-the same quirks and sophistery-and how listeners, afraid of being exposed, nod and express how "interesting" it all is. Something we might call _fetishism of sophistication,_ i.e., worship of intrincic meaning in a series of words, each of which might have meaning, but put together only becomes hot air.
_"...as soon as the table emergés...as a...commodity, it changés into a thiing..which transceénds sensuousness. What is,...in fact,...a social relation betwéen people...instéad assumes the fantastic form of a...relation between thiings. [pretentious accent added]"_
Substantively, it's like hearing vegans accuse people of not understanding where meat in the store comes from. They only see a pre-packaged use-value, the social context in which the product is produced, is hidden. What is supposedly missing is a perceptual presentation of the butchering process at the shopping counter. Which, BTW, might be true to some extent. After all, people are first and foremost perceptual before they are conceptual. However, to say they don't know where meat comes from is a bit of a stretch, not to mention, the conclusion, therefore people ought to be vegans do not follow.
What is interesting, however, is that intellectuals who have full mystical insight into commodity production, unlike us ordinary people who only see vulgar use-values _(or should I say commodity fetishism),_ seem to be unable to produce anything themselves, and instead seek to rule over those who produce. Which means, in a broader sense, to rule over us.
Though, workers perfectly know where goods come from, they participate in the process every day, unlike intellectuals who for the most part are living off surplus-value from the taxpayers. I have the good fortune to hear, when people are asked why commodities have value, that they do not answer something along the lines of work done or the time it took.
What neither workers nor intellectuals understand, however, is how the business originated in the first place. In all the years they have had at their disposal, since the industrial revolution, they have yet to understand what entrepreneurship is. Seems like they are completely alienated from that process. All they have come up with so far is something about owning the means of production, then M-C-M just happens. An incredibly naïve formula to say the least. Descartes might have divided reality into _mind/body,_ but Marx seems to have thrown out _mind_ completely. With the mind out of the way, which leads us to economic determinism, intellectuals were left with only labor as a mysterious value-creating substance which crystallizes itself as sweat particles in commodities. It's almost as if labor has intrinsic value - Labor Fetishism.
@@bjrnhagen4484 there is no inherent value that marx talks about, the value what ur talking about here is what marx discusses as exchange value, as the name suggests, it comes into play via exchange. So u've believed wrongly that marx talks about some inherent value and your whole discussion comes so close to the point but still misses it entirely.
Secondly the marxist method is not binary, that is a vulgar materialist naturalist approach not a dialectical one. And the dialectic that marx talks about is not of (inherent value or value) and use values (needs) but of exchange values and use values that is, private concept of needs and the social concept of exchange.
You really seem confused about the whole concept of value that marx talks about. You're interchangeably mistaking it for use values and exchange value and this foreign concept of "inherent value" which marx never asserts that such a thing exists.
But it is really funny that even though you're parroting bourgeoise economists and seem to be under the impression that marx never understood or thought or talked about such a concept, he did. In the very first paragraph of the Capital volume 1. "A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.2 Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production"
You should really read Marx. you'll enjoy it and it will clear up some of your misconceptions, assuming what you wrote here was written in good faith and not as a bad faith detractor, but your confidence in falsely claiming things makes me feel like it's the latter. Your second comment is even more hilarious. Marx precisely talks about how business originates, how production originates, and how exchange originates. I don't if u are purposefully portraying Ricardo's labour theory as Marx's, but that's what ur doing, criticizing ricardo's labour theory while labelling it as Marx's labour theory. What is even more funny is that Marx's criticism of ricardo is eerily similar to what u're trying to say. Again, please read marx before you criticize his works because this is really funny but also really sad.
You explained it pretty neatly.. i was having problem understand this concept. Thanks man
Im so glad i discovered this channel
thank you for this! I was reading Marx's Coat article which i assume you are familiar with and I need some background explanation. This helped a lot! Thank you!
I've also just started trying to understand Capital Vol. 1. This is admittedly one of the most difficult texts I've tackled (just got past the part where Marx spends quite a bit of time on the analogy about linen and coats to help explain labor & commodities).
Thank you for such a lucid exposition of this topic. I have a quick question- you mentioned the traditional economists of the time espoused Labor Theory of Value. I always thought it was Marx himself who developed LTV.
Can someone please clarify a bit? Maybe I misinterpreted what was being said.
It really originates with earlier economists as an effort to explain where value comes from. They thought the amount and intensity of labor determined a products value whereas Marx was suspicious of such a claim for the reasons I set out in the vid :)
Easiest to understand explaination so far thank you so much.
People get paid to explain this less clearly than you did.
fantastic explanation. At this point I don't know if you are still in academia, but I hope you have become a Professor, because academia sure needs more talent like yours
Very good explanation. Are you pretty much going through the first chapter of Capital?
Looks like he’s mainly going over sections 3 & 4 of Ch.1
One of the cutest philosophers on UA-cam!
Haha just recently started working my way through Capital, great timing for this video
Oh god good luck haha
Well explained!
Well explained. Thank you.
Thank you for the video. Very informative!
You've done a good job. I'm depressed at the state of comments in this video however. Clearly only those interested in Marx's work would search for such videos but even from these people you can see from their comments that they have not touched the actual text in their lives, and want to substitute for it entirely with videos. What a shame. People have truly lost all ability to read and think for themselves, we are actually becoming dumber day by day, and it is scary.
lol im just starting capital so this was good timing
Its easy to go bankrupt by spending large sums of cash at once. Imagine losing everything after decades of work because an investment went bad. There's no shortage of people out there who will happily scam you. I've lost so much to scams you wouldn't believe it. You live, you learn, but damn is that a hard lesson to learn.
Love the way you explain things !
Hello! Thank you so much for the video.
I have just finished reading chapter one of Capital and I interpreted Marx as saying that LTV is valid within the capitalist mode of production. Thus I was a bit surprised when I got to 5:17 when you said he is suspicious of LTV.
Is the discussion of the fluctuation of value (demonstrated in your video by the shoes example) in Chapter 1?
Thanks!
Marx criticized Ricardo's LTV which fetishized labour instead of commodity. Marx's discussion of exchange value and how it originates serves the purpose for the reader to combat this fetishism. To make it short for you, in capitalism during marx's time, exchange, production were already very social. Exchange is a social convention, and so the qualitative and quantitative aspects of this exchange will also be social.
Details.
No exchange will take place until it is already a social convention to exchange x(relative form) for y(equivalent form), and by the time marx started writing, social conventions had moved from [x for y] to [x for y, x for z, x for j,etc ] and from this to [x,y,z,j,all the commodities in the world for gold] and then finally [x,y,z,j,all the commodities in the world for money] All of this is from the first chapter of capital vol 1.
I will now copy paste an excerpt that talks about what i just discussed above from my work which is an effort to make marx's theory accessible to the working class.
"The very first instance of an exchange of two articles gives rise to a form of value which Marx calls A ie The Elementary form of Value which is in turn composed of two poles which are Relative form and Equivalent form as discussed above. If we invert this form A we again only get form A itself but now it is different as the placeholders have exchanged their places, and we are thus measuring the value of two different commodities.
If a commodity is habitually being exchanged for other commodities it gives rise to the second form of value that Marx discusses ie form B ie Total or Expanded Form of Value. For example cattle being exchanged for ration, farm equipment, articles of clothing, etc.
The faults of this form of Value lie in that there are never ending placeholders for us to consider and at a time the Value of our commodity can only be expressed in one such isolated equivalent. And this is at the heart of how this Value form originated, when one commodity began being habitually exchanged for various other commodities, as we discussed in the cattle example.
When we invert this form of Value we take all the isolated equivalents and put them on the LHS and instead turn one commodity as a placeholder for all the commodities on the LHS which includes every commodity imaginable bar itself. This happens when one such commodity becomes socially recognised as a placeholder for Value, and thus, the SCUL(Specialised Concrete Useful Labour) that gives it its bodily form and Use Value is then the equivalent for undifferentiated human labour power. This private labour becomes social. This form is discussed by Marx next as form C i.e. The General Form of Value.
The question now arises which commodity takes this role of universal placeholder, the answer is Gold. The reasons for which can be intuitively deduced but Marx as of now does not go into the details.
And now that one commodity namely Gold has been isolated from the rest and been made to play the role of universal equivalent, this form of Value is called The Money form i.e. form D."
I hope this is enough to establish that marx was against the fetishism of both commodity and labour.
@@Poizn0 Hello, Poizn0. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
@@JC-hw9ir no problem :) out of curiosity I would like to ask you if ur reading marx out of your own curiosity or you had to do this for some college/uni stuff or something else entirely
@@Poizn0 I’m just reading cause I’m interested in critical theory in general! I was reading Marcuse and a bunch of freudo-Marxist stuff so I thought it’s be interesting to give Marx himself a read.
@@JC-hw9ir nice
heyyyy pretty new thumbnails for most of the vids
Brilliant
Hey, really loved the way you explain. I recently develop interest in theories. Are you a philosophy student?
I did my MA in Continental Philosophy but am now a Media Studies student :)
@@TheoryPhilosophy I recently discovered the channel, you are doing a good job as far as I have listened, I'm eager to see/listen to your takes on theories prevalent in media studies, as I started my MA in the field of media
@@dergutejunge I hope to!
NOICE this video is a fuckn blessing
Thank you
Good job 👍
Have you read E.P. Thompson's book on Althusser, "Poverty of Theory"? If not, would you consider reading it to review it?
Oh gosh maybe one day haha
When you say abstract labour do you mean the division of labour basically?
Kind of. I mean it in the sense that labor becomes a category itself, detached from the individual instances of labor. This logic allows for the emergence of 'unskilled' working class that are homogenised under capitalist exploitation
Concrete labour refers individual instances of labour - sewing a shirt, making a hammer, performing a service. These instances of labour are highly diverse; theres no 'natural' point of comparison at all. Under capitalism, labour has to become an input into production, thus becoming an economic category. A value is placed on labour, you have to pay someone for their labour. But how can you establish a method of payment, of valuation, of something as heterogenous and diverse as concrete labour. Labour must first become abstracted - it must become an economic category. Here, labour is homogenous. Abstract labours now share a common property - (socially necessary) labour time. When you work for someone, you rent/hire yourself out for a period of time - you become an instrument in production - an accounting figure, assigned a cost per hour. That is abstract labour.
@@himathsiriniwasa7646 thanks
Amazing!!!
I think you bring much confusion by equating value with price. Yes an endorsement of Micheal Jordan for Nike increases demand which increases price but that has nothing to do with what Marx calls value
I somehow ended up in the right place🤗
Consumer society 😾
what does this have to do with rabies pride
Some country or other ought to have the image of Marx on its currency. (In a movie or novel, at least.) Ha.
Your example with the book is pretty bad, use-value =/= value, value exists “contextually” in the sense of only under the circumstances that labour is socialized via exchange, not relative to utility, symbolic or sentimental individual experiences.
So many errors are made here. Capitalist don’t charge what ever they want on top for profit, market competition prevents them from doing that.
When he said shoes and endorsement I knew he had the NIKE and that gay in his mind when he(guy) makes millions of$and workers who make those shoes make only a penny and i do not care about basketball
You are so handsome 😉👌🥰
shit !