So I was on Twitter doing my normal agitation posting, trying to catch the attention of people. When I saw Madeline Pendleton post a response to some rich jackass talking about how Marx didn't consider how good suede jackets feels. It's probably important to mention the jacket is also a designer jacket that costs over $7,000
Madeline, of course, responded that Marx did, in fact, consider this problem, and it is a problem of commodity fetishization.
After having a small discussion with Twitter communists, they're convinced she's wrong because she's utilizing "commodity fetish" in the wrong way. They think she's using it as this dude is worshipping the commodity, but I think she's arguing the dude is attempting to associate mythical value to this object in order to justify the extreme cost of a jacket.
When I asked for more clarification, I also got linked a 169 page book instead of a section from that book which is just so helpful when you're trying to understand a very critical hyper-specific concept that probably doesn't need a full 169 pages to explain it to you.
One, I feel like communists on Twitter are splitting hairs to attack Madeline over something that feels like it's probably just a miscommunication between concepts, two I kinda feel like Madeline has a pretty good argument to hear that this is, in fact, commodity fetishism the way that Marx describes it in Capital.
When I asked for clarification, since I got linked to a Wallace, Sean quote and a 169 page book on why the economy doesn't exist, I figured that @Cowbee@hexbear.net might have some actual good information to help a budding Marxist understand what's going on here.
Mostly stupid and dramatic. I am curious to know who is right and where I can find more information on commodity fetishization.
In my understanding Cori is correct here. I see this misunderstanding so frequently that I was considering making a post here sometime to ask if I was misunderstanding something.
Commodity fetishism is not the idea that the price of a commodity can be consistently above its socially necessary labor time. Commodity fetishism doesn't say anything quantitative about the magnitude of value.
Instead, commodity fetishism is about how the human relationships between each of us are hidden when the product of labor takes the commodity form. The act of buying an apple from the grocery store required actions from other people: the part time worker who stocked the shelves, the delivery truck driver who brought it to the store, the migrant who picked and sorted the apple on the orchard, etc. These human relationships are obscured with an object-to-object relationship between your money and the apple. Commodity fetishism is about how the apple and the money are treated as if they have a magical property of "value" which does not physically exist in any object on Earth!
This is what Marx means by fetishism: just like religious objects are imagined to have magical properties like the ability to heal, grant eternal life, and so on. In capitalism, commodities are also imbued with a magical property of having value, and so the commodities are able to "talk" with each other through the language of value. This is a qualitative description. It is not about the price of a commodity related to its quantity of value.
I hope you are catching on to the analogy with religion. In capitalist society, we have a world of commodities which are constantly in dialogue with each other, seemingly without the input of human action. This is a fantastical existence, yet it has an objective (if not physical) reality that we live with every day. Compare this with for example the Greek gods who were imagined to interact with each other on a higher plane, outside of human input.
Importantly, commodity fetishism does not remove the human relationships between producers. These still exist: you still have a material relationship with everyone who produced the commodity you purchased. But Marx is saying the commodity fetish has objective existence in capitalism - you can't just make it go away by learning that it exists, and overcoming it mentally. Commodity fetishism won't disappear until capitalism disappears.
To bring this full circle to the twitter argument: commodity fetishism also is not about the way commodities make you feel subjectively. It is not that a suede coat feels nice, and so you're willing to pay higher than its value for the subjective feeling. That is simply a different part of the analysis than what Marx is getting at with commodity fetishism.
Commodity fetishism has objective existence in any capitalist society. On the other hand, if you really want to buy a pokemon card for $1000 for subjective reasons (it's super rare!), you can transparently understand that it didn't cost $1000 to produce the card. It's something you can overcome or at least understand mentally. Commodity fetishism is not like that.
I see, so, because this dude isn't talking about exchange value or anything related to the exchange value of this object he's simply just talking about the niceties of the objects. It has no bearing in commodity fetish because it has nothing to do with the relations or labor that went into making that commodity.
Yeah exactly. Although I think Madeline was referring more to the aura which companies or products have as a result of marketing. Like how brand names like Nike can fetch a higher price due to perceived brand quality etc. Since the aura is something immaterial but can affect one's perception of a commodity, this often gets conflated with Marx's commodity fetishism. But I personally don't see these to be the same (willing to consider arguments to the contrary).
In my opinion Marx's commodity fetishism is an objective feature of commodities, independent of the participants in the economy, conceptually it belongs in analysis of the economic base. This agrees with Marx's placement of commodity fetishism in Vol. 1 Ch. 1 after introducing the commodity.
Meanwhile, a commodity's "aura" is a superstructural phenomenon related to Volume 2 stuff about selling commodities, maybe also Volume 3 stuff about profit distribution between industries. Evidence against considering this as commodity fetishism is that Marx introduces commodity fetishism before he talks about prices distinct from values.