Commodity fetishism

Here is a utopian version of commodity fetishism. The animation of inanimate nature or things is not taken to be a sign of alienation but rather a sign of an empathy that is the wellspring of poetry, as asserted by the Romantics. There is an identity between the world and humans, a communication, a relationship, but not one of exploitation and abuse. 

Although commodity fetishism is the best-known variety of fetishism, because of its prominent place in Marx s best-known work, it is by no means the only or even the most important case. The following categories are all subject to fetishism commodities, money, industrial capita) and interest-bearing capital. The fetishism of commodities is, as we have seen, the belief that commodities have value in the same sense as they have weight or colour. One may well ask who ever held this absurd belief. Marx was aware that the ""mystification is still a very simple one in the case of a commodity. Everybody understands more or less clearly that the... 

The semblance of simplicity (found in commodity fetishism] disappears in more advanced relations of production. All the illusions of the Monetary system arise from the failure to perceive that money [or gold, though a physi object with distinct properties, represents a social rebtion of production. ... 

What Is to Be Done The Urgent Task of Curing Commodity Fetishism... 

Spyer, P. (1998). Border fetishisms Material objects in unstable places. New York Routledge. Taussig, M. (1980). The devil and the commodity fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press. 

Exploitative economic relationships came to dominate other areas of life through a psychology of emulation of commodity fetishism and conspicuous consumption . The insatiable pursuit of goods allowed consumers to display prowess and to identify with the dominant predatory class, and in doing so it helped to integrate society. Such ideas are clearly powerful, plausible and attractive, and they were quite original too. 

The flames of Watts consummated the system of consumption. The theft of large refrigerators by people with no electricity, or with their electricity cut off, is the best image of the lie of affluence transformed into a truth in play. Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and alteration, whatever particular form it may take. Only when it is paid for with money is it respected as an admirable fetish, as a symbol of status within the world of survival. 

Such direct action expels the article from fetishism. It returns the commodity as symbol back to use, and then pushes it further in a negation of... 

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