A-Infos (en) France, Alternative Libertaire #223 - Dico anti-capitalist Florian: What is the "commodity fetishism"? (fr) [machine translation]

Each month, a word or phrase under scrutiny ---- What is the "commodity fetishism"? ---- 
The analysis of the commodity is the starting point chosen by Marx in Capital (1867) to 
criticize radically - the root - capitalist society. The merchandise is not merely an 
object, it is not ahistorical, it is specific to capitalism. Marx first analyzes its dual 
character, use value and exchange value. He then described the double character of labor, 
and the useful abstract is the essence of the goods. Then comes the form of value and 
finally the fetish character of the commodity and its secret. J. Bidet [ 1 ] explains that 
the market Marx is "  a division of labor whereby the work of one against those of other 
commute  "and"  appears to stakeholders as a natural and spontaneous switching between 
things that are exchanged between them according to their value, but they have taken it  . "

Well as the analysis clearly Anselm Jappe [ 2 ], "  in modern society, capitalist and 
industrial, almost all social activity takes the form of a commodity (...) The commodity 
is determined by the labor time necessary for its production.  "This is the amount of work 
that is incorporated that decides his fate, and not its specific qualities. "  The 
products of the man and begin to live independently governed by the laws of his money and 
capital accumulation  . "

So fetishism is to be taken literally. According to A. Barking, modern men worship what 
they produced themselves, assigning goods to independent living and the power to govern in 
turn. This is the actual operating mode of the market society. "  As goods, all objects 
and all acts are equal. They are nothing other than more or less large quantities of 
accumulated labor, and therefore money. This is the market that runs this approval, beyond 
the subjective intentions of actors.  "Marx also criticized political economy as giving a 
natural character to what is not, and ironically this character" mystical ". The logic of 
the commodity and throws a "misty veil" on the real relations, that is to say, the social 
relations between individuals.

[ 1 ] Jacques Bidet, "Paradoxes of the Marxian Merchandise" Current Marx, No. 34, 2003

[ 2 ] Anselm Jappe, "Is there an art after the end of art? "Palim-psao.over-blog.fr, 2009
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