Commodity fetishism

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Revision as of 07:17, 2 August 2023 by RedPowerBall (talk | contribs) (Adding in basic definition to commodity fetishism as well as marx quote)

Commodity Fetishism is a theoretical concept first described by Karl Marx in Capital, vol. I. It expresses a specific character of the Commodity that occurs because of the value-form, or the price, of a commodity applied on its production is seen as an inherent quality of the commodity instead of simply as human labor relations. Further, because of this quality that is dialectically tied to the concept of production production, the social relation created by the producers (i.e. laborers) is transformed into a social relation between objects, and that this relationship is totally outside of the producers.

Commodity fetishism masks the labor relationships of producers under capitalism, especially those relationships in production and distribution.

"...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"[1]