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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  4348 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thoughts on Capitalism

Marx was wrong about almost everything he ever wrote about economics, not least that capitalism would eventually spiral into destruction and ruin, but his thoughts on commodity fetishism, whatever that means, have to be among his worst work. He was obsessed with the impacts of labor on the economy; so much so that he misattributed all sorts of things to the value of labor.

The entirety of the section of Das Kapital that you linked can be summed up thus: resources, when the mysterious ingredient labor is added, become something more ... and then we worship them. What they become, of course, is commodities, and the reason we give commodities more value is that they have been imparted with uses by labor. Marx says that these commodities, in addition to having uses, create a sort of social connection between producer and product. (Think Geppetto and Pinocchio, an imperfect allegory.)

The problem is that he then goes on to say that not only do we place value beyond that which physical manifests itself into these commodities, but also that this is a bad thing. I can think of many times in which I might "fetishize" a commodity, with no sinister underlying motive. A stuffed animal that I've had since birth, worth less than nothing on the open market -- but if I lost it I'd pay $20 to get it back? Total fetish there.

Capitalism is simply not the religion of greed which Marx seemed to believe it was, and that clouds all his writings.





thefoundation  ·  4348 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What was argued is not that singular items are fetishized, but instead the consumer culture that we live in is fetishized. It is not specifically the items that we buy, but more so the way we can buy them and the culture that surrounds purchasing products. We continue to want more and more and with this we become greedy, we are not satisfied with only having a stuffed teddy bear. Eventually we replace that teddy bear with an iPad. We are consumed by each new commodity that hits the market. We cannot get out of the cycle of purchasing, discarding, and repeating. With this we lose the importance that work actually plays in making these.

user-inactivated  ·  4348 days ago  ·  link  ·  

In my opinion, this is not remotely what Marx was saying. In any case, it's foolish and certainly isn't endemic to capitalism.