Commodity fetishism

Commodity fetishism

Commodity fetishism, according to Karl Max, refers to the particular perception that there are relationships between production and exchange as can be correlated to the money and market trade. On the first appearance, the commodity is perceived as a trivial thing that can easily be deciphered. However, Karl Max argues that the abstract aspects of the products then transform into economic value and corresponding intrinsic value to people. The form of commodity changes with each step of production, for instance, wood changes into furniture like a chair. While a chair remains to be an everyday thing on appearance, it becomes transcendent when it is labeled as a commodity. Therefore, there is no relationship between the value of a product and its uses.  In a capitalist society, the social relations among people are based on the respective roles that they play in the production process of commodities, that is who makes what is what matters the creation of relationships. In the market, commodities of each creator appear to be in a depersonalized form as a detached exemplification of a given type of product. These relationships then go ahead and obscure the social relations that are associated with production due to little regard that is aimed at the individual producers.

Furthermore, there is a sociological concept that lies in the idea of commodity fetishism.  Max writes, “If then we leave out the consideration the use-value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labor. But even the product of labor itself has changed hands”(164).  Consequently, there is absolutely no relationship between the form of commodity and the relational value of the products of labor within which it physically or materially appears. The definite social relation is created by men themselves while factoring in the connections between things . the analogy is dependent upon the realm of religion. Products of the human brain are perceived to be autonomous things that have a life of their own and enter into relations with each other in the human race. Therefore, in reality, commodity fetishism lies in the attachment of fanaticism in the products of labor as soon as they are produced as commodities.

Question Two

According to Marx’s analysis, primitive accumulation borders on the origins of capital and class distinctions that are formed between posses capital and those that do not. Marx disputes the previous explanation of Adam Smith, who tries to explain the process of cumulative accumulation as being a simple standard process of transition of the economy to create class distinctions. The disputed explanation states; in an approved social setting, some laborers work diligently towards the accumulation of capital, and with time, they build up their wealth stores. On the other hand, there are those less diligent laborers that accept that they are to live within the wages of their labor and do not strive for expansion. Marxian economics presents a different theory that includes the use of enclosures as part of the process of primitive accumulation. Enclosure refers to the consolidation process of acquiring land and all the exclusive universal rights and then creating restrictions that only allow for use by the private owner. According to this alternative theory, primitive accumulation was reached through forceful takeovers such as colonialism, violence, and enslavement.

Additionally, the process of primitive accumulation is a vicious circle that rotates from divorcing the producer from the means of production. According to Karl Max, “It appears primitive because it forms the prehistoric stage of capital and the mode of production corresponding with it”(501). Therefore, the process is the basis of the creation of a capitalistic society as it transforms social means of subsistence and production into capital. It also enables the change of immediate producers to become wage laborers. Therefore, the capitalist system is bent upon the fulfillment of the selfish needs of the rich through enclosing accumulated wealth. For example, it is taking of land by individuals, thus expelling the resident population only to enclose it through privatization. The property is then releasing it into privatized mainstream capital accumulation.

Works Cited

Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy – The Process of Capitalist Production. Cosimo, 2007.