Post #1950780 · Elektrine

2026-01-07 00:52 UTC

The commodity fetish isn't about "everyone trying to make money all the time"... The commodity fetish explains the obfuscation of social relations. Not people trying to make money. People try to make money because it can be exchanged for goods and services, believe it or not. > And what observable effect does that have on the world that isn’t exactly what OP is describing? One could say: * The failure of workers to identify that they are members of an entire working class, rather than employees of different workplaces * The appearance of political/social relations as natural and transhistorical parts of the world * Arguably, the course of pretty much every attempted socialist project. The commodity fetish is central to Marx's project. [This book](https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/index.htm) is a good argument on the significance of the commodity fetish for Marx. I don't understand this ridiculous anti-intellectualism. Why reference Marx if you seem to refuse to actually learn what he said?

Replies (1)

@frisbird@lemmy.ml 2026-01-07 01:15

> Characteristics which had appeared mysterious because they were not explained on the basis of the relations of producers with each other were assigned to the natural essence of commodities. Just as the fetishist assigns characteristics to his fetish which do not grow out of its nature, so the bourgeois economist grasps the commodity as a sensual thing which possesses pretersensual properties. So when OP says "fuck why are videos like this. Why can't videos just be like that" what is happening? Is it that OP is assigning characteristics to videos that are actually expressions of the relationship between the producers and consumers of those videos, and of the distributors and the advertisers etc? As far as I can tell, people chasing clout for money is a human relationship, one of deprevation, desperation, and manipulation. And those relationships drive behaviors which result in the characteristics of commodities, like media. I don't know. Maybe I've misinterpreted Marx all this time. It's certainly a topic I haven't deeply wrestled with in concert with others. Happy to be corrected and learn.

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