The Theory of Commodity Fetishism
- In the critique of political economy
Karl Marx proposed that, in a society where independent, private producers trade their products with each other, of their own volition and initiative, and without much co-ordination of market exchange, the volumes of production and commercial activities are adjusted in accordance with the fluctuating values of the products (goods and services) as they are bought and sold, and in accordance with the fluctuations of supply and demand. Because their social co-existence, and its meaning, is expressed through market exchange (trade and transaction), people have no other relations with each other. Therefore, social relations are continually mediated and expressed with objects (commodities and money). How the traded commodities relate will depend upon the costs of production, which are reducible to quantities of human labour, although the worker has no control over what happens to the commodities that he or she produces. (See: Entfremdung, Marx's theory of alienation)
- Commodity fetishism, the socio-economic reification of a commodity into a fetish, an object with intrinsic value and an independent economic reality, is a five-fold transformation —
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