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Commodity Fetishism Quotes

Browse 11 quotes about Commodity Fetishism.

Commodity Fetishism Quotes

“Not the shattered or slashed works to which Alena thrilled, but those objects in the archive that both were and weren't different moved me: they had been redeemed, both in the sense that the fetish had been converted back into cash, the claim paid out, but also in the messianic sense of being saved from something, saved for something. An art commodity that had been exorcised (and survived the exorcism) of the fetishism of the market was to me a utopian readymade–an object for or from a future where there was some other regime of value than the tyranny of price.”

ArtValueUtopiaCommodity FetishismReadymade
Book:10:04
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“This is what the bourgeois political economists have done: they have treated value as a fact of nature, not a social construction arising out of a particular mode of production. What Marx is interested in is a revolutionary transformation of society, and that means an overthrow of the capitalist value-form, the construction of an alternative value-structure, an alternative value-system that does not have the specific character of that achieved under capitalism. I cannot overemphasize this point, because the value theory in Marx is frequently interpreted as a universal norm with which we should comply. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people complain that the problem with Marx is that he believes the only valid notion of value derives from labor inputs. It is not that at all; it is a historical social product. The problem, therefore, for socialist, communist, revolutionary, anarchist or whatever, is to find an alternative value-form that will work in terms of the social reproduction of society in a different image. By introducing the concept of fetishism, Marx shows how the naturalized value of classical political economy dictates a norm; we foreclose on revolutionary possibilities if we blindly follow that norm and replicate commodity fetishism. Our task is to question it.”

PossibilityRevolutionCapitalismLaborValueSocialismCommunismLabourCapitalHarveyMarxValue SystemCommodity FetishismFetishismValue FormLabour Theory Of ValueLtvValue Structure
Book:A Companion to Marx's Capital, Volume 1
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“Elevated to the status of a credit subject, the consumer believes [in the myth of credit] to see in this fact his own human realization and that of his social dignity. The commodity fetishism embodies in his person as the fetish of being, to whom credit gives a sensible and objective reality: the consumer sees himself in credit as in a mirror reflecting all the human attributes emanating from possession - respectability, honesty, occupational activity, recognized and weighed by social consensus...”

AlienationPolitical EconomyCommodity FetishismConsumer CapitalismFalse ConsciousnessMarxist TheoryReificationCapitalism And IdentityCredit EconomyModern Capitalism
Author:José Revueltas
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“What does it mean to be a proletarian, really? [...] It means you are a cog in a process of production that relies on what you do and think, while excluding you from being anything but its product. It means the end of sovereignty, the conversion of all experiential value to exchange value, the final defeat of autonomy.”

CapitalismExploitationAlienationMarxismProletariatFrankensteinKarl MarxWage LaborCommodity FetishismSocialims
Book:Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
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“The contradiction between the individual and the social, between the private and the universal, which bourgeois philosophy is unable to do away with, despite all its efforts, is the very basis of life in bourgeois society as a society of commodity-producers. This contradiction is embodied in the actual interrelations of people who cannot regard their private endeavors as social aspirations except in the absurd and mystified form of the value of commodities.”

IndividualismMarxismCritiqueDialecticsHistorical MaterialismDialectical MaterialismCommodity FetishismCommodity ProductionBourgeois Philosophy
Book:The General Theory of Law and Marxism
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“The consumption celebrity superficially represents different types of personality and shows each of these types having equal access to the totality of consumption and finding similar happiness there. The decision celebrity must possess a complete stock of accepted human qualities. Official differences between stars are wiped out by the official similarity which is the presupposition of their excellence in everything.”

TheoryCapitalismConsumptionConsumerismMarxismCelebritiesSpectacleCommodity FetishismSituationism
Book:The Society of the Spectacle
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“Cuando no se produce ya para el valor de uso sino únicamente para el valor de cambio, cuando el trabajo no sirve para satisfacer ninguna necesidad concreta sino solamente para fabricar unos objetos cualesquiera para venderlos en el mercado (lo que Marx llamó "trabajo abstracto"), entonces la abstracción, lo puramente cuantitativo, el predominio de la forma, y concretamente de la forma-mercancía, sobre cualquier contenido, determinan la entera vida social. El valor de cambio, la simple cantidad de trabajo social que se ha incorporado a una mercancía, es el triunfo de la cantidad, de la abstracción de toda cualidad.”

CapitalismCommodity FetishismValue CriticismAbstract LaborExchange ValueUse Value
Book:El absurdo mercado de los hombres sin cualidades: Ensayos sobre el fetichismo de la mercancía
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“La forma-mercancía, o sea la determinación social de las cosas como mercancías, en la moderna sociedad burguesa se ha convertido en forma universal debido a que el capitalismo ha hecho de la fuerza de trabajo una mercancía de la cual sus portadores disponen libremente: esto es, libres de dependencias personales, libres de toda coacción, menos de la que los obliga a ganar dinero. Pero esa coacción impersonal es universal, de modo que el dinero se ha convertido en la sola finalidad de todo trabajo y la venta de la propia fuerza de trabajo en forma predominante de reproducción. En la sociedad mercantil, la satisfacción de cualquier necesidad concreta depende del dinero. La necesidad de disponer del máximo posible de dinero se convierte así en el primer "interés propio", igual para todos los miembros de la sociedad, aunque lo tengan que perseguir compitiendo unos con otros como mónadas económicas. Los sujetos del intercambio mercantil, libres e iguales en tal sentido abstracto, se imaginan a sí mismos como individuos autónomos que se ganan honradamente el sustento con su trabajo.”

CapitalismAlienationSubjectivityCommodity FetishismValue CriticismAbstract Labor
Book:El absurdo mercado de los hombres sin cualidades: Ensayos sobre el fetichismo de la mercancía
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“La forma-mercancía, o sea la determinación social de las cosas como mercancías, en la moderna sociedad burguesa se ha convertido en forma universal debido a que el capitalismo ha hecho de la fuerza de trabajo una mercancía de la cual sus portadores disponen libremente: esto es, libres de dependencias personales, libres de toda coacción, menos de la que los obliga a ganar dinero. Pero esa coacción impersonal es universal, de modo que el dinero se ha convertido en la sola finalidad de todo trabajo y la venta de la propia fuerza de trabajo en forma predominante de reproducción. En la sociedad mercantil, la satisfacción de cualquier necesidad concreta depende del dinero. La necesidad de disponer del máximo posible de dinero se convierte así en el primer "interés propio", igual para todos los miembros de la sociedad, aunque lo tengan que perseguir compitiendo unos con otros como mónadas económicas. Los sujetos del intercambio mercantil, libres e iguales en tal sentido abstracto, se imaginan a sí mismos como individuos autónomos que se ganan honradamente el sustento trabajando.”

CapitalismAlienationSubjectivityCommodity FetishismValue Criticism
Book:El absurdo mercado de los hombres sin cualidades: Ensayos sobre el fetichismo de la mercancía
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