Commodity fetishism

Commodity Fetishism is a theoretical concept first described by Karl Marx in Capital, vol. I. It describes the relationships behind a property of the Commodity; how the value-form (i.e. price, exchange value, etc.) of a commodity is considered to be an inherent quality within itself instead of as the product of human social relations.

The introduction and reproduction of the value-form is dialectically tied to the process of commodity production. The value-form transforms social relations between producers (e.g. workers, laborers) into a social relation between things (e.g. money). This generates a metaphysical relationship between people and abstracts individual labor, making it a "standard of homogenous human labor."

Below Marx gives insight into this topic and connects religion to the concept

"...for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous human labour – for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of religion"

Other Frameworks?

Within the same chapter Marx explores what kind of labor relationships could exist in communities of "free" producers that hold the "means of production in common" and where the "means of subsistence is determined by ... labour time"

Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour power of the community. The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion amongst them is consequently necessary. The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers. We will assume, but merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities, that the share of each individual producer in the means of subsistence is determined by his labour time. Labour time would, in that case, play a double part. Its apportionment in accordance with a definite social plan maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community. On the other hand, it also serves as a measure of the portion of the common labour borne by each individual, and of his share in the part of the total product destined for individual consumption. The social relations of the individual producers, with regard both to their labour and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution.