Talk:Commodity fetishism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 NPOV 2 Misreading 3 Justification for major edit 4 Start from somewhere else?

[edit] NPOV

Ok -- So I removed inauthentic from the lead sentence describing commodity fetishism, as well as confused, as I believe they give commodity fetishism a bad rap. Ok! 04:42, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misreading

This appears to present a misreading of the theory. It is not Marx's claim that fetishism arises in the sphere of consumption (nor yet advertising), but that capitalism profoundly disconnects people's social activity (labouring to contribute to the common wealth) from their consciousness, making social relations appear to them as relations between inanimate objects - commodities, especially universal equivalents such as gold. Pending other opinions, I'll attempt to add depth in due course. Adhib

- Have now finished plumbing, pending exhaustive essay. Comments welcome Adhib 23:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Disappointed to see my correx expunged. The original crude misrepresentation of the theory has been restored (doesn't that one owe more to Jean Baudrillard than Marx?). Pending comment from the relevant editors, I plan to find a simpler way to present both the crude and the sophisticated accounts in this article. Adhib

---

I reverted a recent rewrite because it was poorly written. Someone put at least one sentence of that rewrite back in and I still think it is very poorly written. I am referring to the second sentence of the current version, which has three problems. First, it suggests what the "aim" of "commodity fetishism" is. Concepts do not have aims, people who use concepts have aims. I suspect Marx developed the concept for many reasons, not just one. And although this sentence does point to one correct and valuable effect of using the concept, I see no basis for saying that it is the aim. Second, the word "capture" is at best highly idiomatic. It doesn't make sense to me and I think will confuse many readers. Encyclopedias, whose contributors aim to present information to a broad audience, should rely on plain English. Finally, the sentence is wishy-washy (using "may" or "might" or somesuch word). I do not think it adds subtlety or sophistication to the article, I think it is confusing. Slrubenstein

Thanks for this explanation. If I understand you correctly, your revert was motivated by style problems, not problems of substance. I'll sort out my style and have another attempt. Adhib 23:41, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay! In the process, try not to cut content -- add new information, but don't just cut what others worked on. Slrubenstein

I can't see a way to preserve the erroneous presentation without preserving the error. Hoping the 2nd attempt is clearer. Adhib 00:17, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, maybe it would be a good idea for you to spell out what, exactly, is the error you want to fix, here, since this is a collaborative project? Slrubenstein

[edit] Justification for major edit

Naturally this is a collaborative project. My first action on this article was to register my observations here, and canvass responses. I have made no serious changes without first seeking out others' views. That said, SIrubenstein's request suggests that my initial explanation was not accessible enough. Please ignore this longer explanation if the first sufficed:

1. The section ending 'Marx's theory of commodity fetishism proposes to explain this phenomenon' is straightforwardly false. Marx's theory makes no claims in that direction - it has nothing to do with advertizing, or with imparting magical or mystical powers to the consumer. If this were an article discussing Jean Baudrillard's System of Objects such thoughts might be relevant.

This article is not on "Marx's theory," it is on a concept. As the orginal article states, the concept was developed by Marx. But that does not mean that the article must restrict itself to Marx's view. First, you cut the material on its origin in the history of religion, which provides context -- whyh? Second, you cut the sentence on "advertizing." I agree this sentence was poorly stated and gave the implication that Marx said it. But the sollution is not to cut the sentence, the solution is to rewrite it ascribing it to later thinkkers like Baudrillard and perhaps Benjamin. Do not cut useful content -- ADD necessary information. Slrubenstein

The article as it stood referred to no other thinkers than Marx, and claimed that Marx's theory was aimed at solving something which you concede was actually irrelevant to Marx. Fine. I will paste the stuff about advertizing into a separate section concerning developments in the concept after Marx.

The Fetishism of Commodities is the keystone in Marx's analysis of a historically specific social form, known in political economy as 'value'. It has no connection whatsoever to silly Marge Simpson thinking a new handbag makes her look sexy.

I went back over the previous version and didn't find any reference to Marge Simpson's handbag. Be that as it may, to find that a handbag makes one "sexy" is to ascribe to the handbag a particular use value which is very much tied up with value and thus commodity fetishism. Whether Marx said this or not is irrelevant as this is not an article on Marx. What is important is whether the example is consistent with some use of the concept "historical fetishism" and if so, it is worth keeping -- although perhaps in need of development and clarification. Slrubenstein

It's not clear to me what established concept we are discussing - it seems I have removed a concept which you understand as commodity fetishism, one which you initially believed was due to Marx, but which is not clearly referenced in alternative source material. Perhaps you need to add stuff on Benjamin (?) in the new section.

2. There followed a section attempting to summarize the analysis contained in the other three sections of Chapter One of Capital. This section was not too far off being true, but its relevance was shaky, at best.

My advice: if you think the relevance is shaky, do not cut someone else's work -- that opinion is not strong enough. If you think it is utterly irrelevant of course, that iks another matter -- I merely focus on the word you chose, "shaky," which is somewhat qualified. Since Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism comes at the end of the first chapter of Capital, it seems reasonable to think that he found the former analysis relevant to the latter. Even if you disagree, you should not be surprised that others find it relevant too. I am sorry, but your own taste is not adequate justification to cut someone else's work. Cut indeed if there is no conceivable relevance. Otherwise, add information to correct and contextualize. Slrubenstein

My intent is only to aid comprehension of the concept, not to denigrate the work of others. I believe that my rewording of Marx's argument from the first three sections of chapter 1, avoiding his jargon (which begs further explanation), is more likely to impart some of the logic of his argument. That said, I have attempted to weave in your alternative method of explaining the logic.

3. The article concluded with a nonsensical 'illustration' which further muddled the explanatory value of what came before. Adhib 17:15, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

According to whom? How? I think you misunderstood what I meant before when I asked you to explain your changes. This sentence amounts to "I don't like it" or "I don't agree." Well, actually I figured out that you didn't like it or didn't agree. The question is, why? Just to say it is muddled or nonsensical is really just to express your own distaste, not to explain it. Sorry buddy, but when working with others, part of the work is making or own opinions accountable to others. Slrubenstein

Thanks for the advice. Perhaps you could explain to me here what the illustration illustrates, since I have failed to follow its logic. Then I'd be in a better position to see how to reinstate it.

I have pointed out a few passages that you cut, apparently without adequate justification. I urge you to put them back into the article, and encourage you to do so in a way that avoids the problem you saw (i.e. provide the correct ascription, put them in a separate paragraph, add a transition -- whatever). As for the last example, you still need to explain yourself. Slrubenstein

The history of religion point is reintegrated in the intro. I have made a new section dealing with post-Marx versions of the theory, for your points and with what I know of Baudrillard's take on the topic included. I don't know anything about Benjamin - perhaps you could expand? Also, the illustration you wanted to preserve is in there. I guessed at where it should sit, but you'll maybe need to improve that or pin it down with a link or two to the relevant theorists. I think that just leaves the issue of the logical presentation from Capital 1.1.i-iii. I've added a par on that to the article. It boils down to an editorial decision, whether or not to open up the can of worms that is Marx's complex category, value. I think that's an issue best left to one side, for clarity here. Adhib

[edit] Start from somewhere else?

(I got here by googling a particularly cogent sentence found in an otherwise muddled student essay - not sure which of you it belongs to, but it did stand out!).

It seems to me that the essence of Marx's argument on commodity fetishism rests on 3 foundations. First, despite what Marx says in Cap. I, Ch1.4, the essence of 'fetishism' per se is transference, and was first coined in C19th anthropology - a witch doctor may cure the patient through his skill with the lotions and potions that folk wisdom has suggested might be relevant to the symptoms expressed by the patient - but the kudos for effecting the cure does not go to the witch doctor himself, but to the bag of bones, mandrake root, etc, that he waves over the lotioned and potioned patient, while chanting the magic spell that follows the application of the lotions and potions. His skills in diagnosis, prescription and treatment, which are objectively responsible for the cure, have been transferred to his bag of bones, his fetish. Freud makes use of the same concept in his writings on sexual fetishism - a woman's sexual power is transferred to some external object particularly associated with her - shoes, I believe, frequently feature importantly here.

Second, is the significance of labour's species-affirming properties. What for Marx distinguishes humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom is its ability to make tools, because what this uniquely demonstrates is material evidence of the ability, unique to men and women, imaginatively to project themselves into the future, i.e., to imagine a future with themselves in it ("what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees" - the downside is that we are the only animals able to imagine a future without ourselves in it - the only animals to be aware of our own mortality, but that's another story). This is why labour affirms our humanity.

Third, is the essence of capitalism, to be found in the labour contract - it is this that distinguishes capitalism (shorthand here for 'bourgeois mode of production') from feudalism - employer and employee go into contract negotiations, no matter how perfunctory these may be, as legal equals: free labour is the conditio sine qua non for capitalism to exist.

The distinction between labour time and labour power that the labour contract conceals, accounts for commodity fetishism. As employee, you contract, in return for wages, to alienate your skills and creativity, the things that makes you human, for another to dispose of as they wish. Those skills and creativity are put to use to produce commodities - items embodying your alienated labour power, but now the property of the employer and intended to make a profit for him, and which cannot now affirm your humanity.

This is to suggest, as Sayer (1991 - Capitalism and Modernity - an excursus on Marx and Weber) argues, that for Marx, commodity fetishism is "a social process, not a cateqory error". It is capitalist commodity production, carried out in and through the terms agreed in the labour contract, that effects the fetishistic transference of skills and creativity from the labourer to the commodity.

The other, not to be neglected, aspect of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is that social relations in general no longer rest on custom and practice, of mutually understood ties of obligation and servitude. We perform services for others because we are contracted to, not because we are obliged to. The centrality of contractual relations in civil society mean that we at the one and same time enter into objective, contractual relations with others, at the same time as we enter into personal relations with objects ("relations between persons expressed as a relation between things" Cap.Vol 1, Ch.1 ftn 28).

As to contemporary Marxist and social theory, it seems to me that commodity fetishism is used as an explanation for the stability of advanced capitalist societies. Given that commodity fetishism is not a category error, a perfectly logical response to the alienation suffered under capitalist labour relations is to indulge in a little retail therapy, in the hope that some of the magic will rub off on you (I have an ad before me, which asks 'What will your slim, stylish and powerful Dell laptop say about you?' - I paraphrase, but only slightly). Of course, that indulgence realises the profits which keep the system going and helps explain why there has never been a successful Marxist revolution in an advanced capitalist country, contrary to Marx's own expectations about where any such revolution might occur. Hence, in an ironical turn, Marxism ends up explaining social stability rather than campaigning for social change.

I appreciate that this is likely to be regarded as a short essay rather than an encyclopaedia entry, which is why I shan't be trying to amend your own work. But in any revision, I do think that you ought to consider incorporating the importance of contractual relations in civil society (I once heard Eric Hobsbawm give a lecture on this subject many years ago, which led me to develop this 'take' on commodity fetishism), and specifically the importance of the labour contract in not only disguising exploitation but also in effecting the transference of skills and creativity from labourer to product - which is what makes this transference not simply fetishism, but commodity fetishism. --Paulredfern1 18:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)