Commodity Fetishism - Criticism

Criticism

The Marxist theory of commodity fetishism is criticised from the perspectives of:

• Market logic

In the book In Praise of Commercial Culture (2000), the libertarian economist Tyler Cowen said that, despite the cultural tendency to fetishes and fetishism, the human fetishization of commodities (goods and services) is an instance of anthropomorphism (ascribing personal characteristics to animals and objects), and not a philosophic feature particular to the economics of capitalism or to the collective psychology of a capitalist society. That people usually can distinguish between commercial valuations (commodities) and cultural valuations (objets d'art), if not, quotidian life would be very difficult, because people would be unable to agree upon the value and the valuation of an object; thus, if the market did not exist, it would have been impossible for the popular masses to have access to cultural objects.

• Marxism as religion

The historian of ideas Leszek Kołakowski said that Marxism (the philosophy) and Karl Marx (the man) had become fetishized and rendered into commodities; that such a form of intellectual reductionism could be construed as a secular, materialist faith that substituted for supernatural religion.

• Capitalism as religion

In the essay "Capitalism as Religion" (1921), Walter Benjamin said that the idea of whether or not people treat capitalism as a religion was a moot subject, because "One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion." That the religion of capitalism is manifest in four tenets:

(i) "Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed"

(ii) "The permanence of the cult"

(iii) "Capitalism is probably the first instance of a cult that creates guilt, not atonement"

(iv) "God must be hidden from it, and may be addressed only when guilt is at its zenith".

• Commodity iconoclasm

In Portrait of a Marxist as a Young Nun, Professor Helena Sheehan said that the analogy between commodity fetishism and religion is mistaken, because people do not worship money and commodities in the spiritual sense, by attributing to them supernatural powers. That human, psychological beliefs about the value-relationships inherent to commodity fetishism are not religious beliefs, and do not possess the characteristics of spiritual beliefs. The proof of this interpretation lies in the possibility of a person's being a religious believer, despite being aware of commodity fetishism, and being critical of its manifestations; that toppling the Golden Calf might be integral to one's religiousness, that such iconoclasm would lead to opposing all manifestations of idolatry.