Commodity Fetishism

[Spasiba]

What are your thoughts on commodity fetishism (consumerism)? Do you agree or not? It has existed for thousands of years, but how has capitalism forwarded this, and is it wrong? If so, how can it be contained, or stopped?
I feel the obsession with material wealth is way out of hand, and I know people are being exploited by making all this shit en masse, but how can we regulate it? To tell someone what they can or cannot by just doesn't seem to fly.

[long_live_the_revolution]

well ex USSR handled it very well :D

[bezdomni]

I don't think you understand what the fetishism of commodities is. It is quite different from what one would call "consumerism", and it hasn't existed for "thousands of years" - it is something unique to the capitalist mode of production.

Furthermore, commodity fetishism isn't something that we should be opposed to because it is "morally wrong", but because it is innate to capitalism.

The "fetishism of commodities", Marx explains, is the possession of human characteristics by commodities and lies at the root of alienation under the capitalist mode of production.

Marx says:


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 qua 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. ...

[Emphasis mine]

Capital: Volume I, Chapter IV - The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4)

The fetishism of commodities is the essence of bourgeois ideology.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by SovietPants+November 22, 2007 07:58 pm--> (SovietPants @ November 22, 2007 07:58 pm) I don't think you understand what the fetishism of commodities is. It is quite different from what one would call "consumerism", and it hasn't existed for "thousands of years" - it is something unique to the capitalist mode of production.


Karl Marx
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. ... [/b]
So, it seems that Marx disagrees with you. To him, the fetishism of commodities is inherent to the production of commodities, which is, of course, much older than capitalism.

Luís Henrique

[bezdomni]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+November 22, 2007 11:11 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ November 22, 2007 11:11 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 07:58 pm
I don't think you understand what the fetishism of commodities is. It is quite different from what one would call "consumerism", and it hasn't existed for "thousands of years" - it is something unique to the capitalist mode of production.


Karl Marx
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. ...
So, it seems that Marx disagrees with you. To him, the fetishism of commodities is inherent to the production of commodities, which is, of course, much older than capitalism.

Luís Henrique [/b]
You're right, I was incorrect.

[Marxist1917]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+November 22, 2007 11:11 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ November 22, 2007 11:11 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 07:58 pm
I don't think you understand what the fetishism of commodities is. It is quite different from what one would call "consumerism", and it hasn't existed for "thousands of years" - it is something unique to the capitalist mode of production.


Karl Marx
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. ...
So, it seems that Marx disagrees with you. To him, the fetishism of commodities is inherent to the production of commodities, which is, of course, much older than capitalism.

Luís Henrique [/b]
Actually, I believe that Marx defined a commodity as a product produced solely for exchange for other products, and therefore a product produced not for use value but for exchange value. If I am correct, this is something new and unique only to the capitalist mode of production.

[Montagnard]

Originally posted by Marxist1917+November 24, 2007 10:34 pm--> (Marxist1917 @ November 24, 2007 10:34 pm)
Originally posted by Luís Henrique+November 22, 2007 11:11 pm--> (Luís Henrique @ November 22, 2007 11:11 pm)
[email protected] 22, 2007 07:58 pm
I don't think you understand what the fetishism of commodities is. It is quite different from what one would call "consumerism", and it hasn't existed for "thousands of years" - it is something unique to the capitalist mode of production.


Karl Marx
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. ...
So, it seems that Marx disagrees with you. To him, the fetishism of commodities is inherent to the production of commodities, which is, of course, much older than capitalism.

Luís Henrique [/b]
Actually, I believe that Marx defined a commodity as a product produced solely for exchange for other products, and therefore a product produced not for use value but for exchange value. If I am correct, this is something new and unique only to the capitalist mode of production.[/b]

No...

Commodities are the products of labor which acquire a value through routine exchange. They very quickly begin to be produced for exchange and sometimes, solely for exchange. This predates the capitalist mode of production by several thousand years. Production for exchange certainly predates the origin of money, for example, and dates back at least to the ancient Sumerians.

Interestingly, the first instances of the use of money was in heavy rings made of precious metals - totally impractical as a means of circulation and intended, instead, as a repository for value. That, along with Sumerian cuneiform developed for the purpose of determining and recording exchange, is a testimony to how far back commodities go though they don't become the primary form of wealth until a few hundred years ago.