Fetichismo de la mercancía

Karl Marx, El Capital, I.4 El carácter fetichista de la mercancía y su secreto, pp. 101 y siguientes, edición de Akal

A primera vista la mercancía parece un objeto trivial, obvio. De su análisis resulta que es una cosa muy complicada, llena de sutilezas metafísicas y caprichos teológicos. En cuanto a valor de uso no hay nada misterioso en ella, ya se la considere bajo el punto de vista de que con sus propiedades satisface propiedades humanas, o que recibe estas propiedades solamente como producto del trabajo humano. Es evidente, que con su actividad, el hombre cambia las formas de las materias naturales de una manera útil para él. La forma de la madera se modifica...

[103] Lo misterioso de la forma mercancía consiste, pues, sencillamente en el hecho de que les refleje a los hombres los caracteres sociales de su propio trabajo como caracteres objetivos de los productos del trabajo, como propiedades naturales sociales de estas cosas, y, por tanto, refleja también la relación social de los productores con el trabajo total como una relación social de objetos, existente fuera de ellos. Gracias a este quid pro quo los productos del trabajo se transforman en mercancías, objetos sensiblemente suprasensibles [???] o sociales... la relación social determinada de de los mismos hombres [productores, capitalistas], la cual adopta aquí la forma fantasmagórica de una relación entre cosas [el intercambio de mercancías, o de mercancías por la mercancía dinero]. De ahí que hallar una analogía tengamos que trasladarnos a las regiones nebulosas del mundo religioso. Aquí los productos del cerebro humano parecen dotados de vida propia, independientes, en relación entre sí y con los hombres. Lo mismo ocurre en el mundo de las mercancías con los productos de la mano humana. Esto es lo que llamo fetichismo, que se adhiere a los productos del trabajo en cuanto se producen como mercancías y que, por consiguiente, es inseparable de la producción de mercancías.

Este carácter fetichista del mundo de las mercancías brota, …, del carácter social peculiar del trabajo que produce mercancías...

… [a los productores] las relaciones sociales de sus trabajos privados se les presentan como lo que son, es decir, no como relaciones directamente sociales de las personas en sus trabajos, sino más bien como relaciones objetivas de las personas y relaciones sociales de las cosas. [???]

Notas D. Harvey Reading Capital lecture 2, youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwuMrd_Hgww&index=2&list=PL0A7FFF28B99C1303

Versión en papel: David HARVEY, 2010, A Companion to Marx's Capital, Verso, London

Timecode en el vídeo:: 51:30 > 1:28:15 / fetichismo de la mercancía

Revisar parte final desde 1:25...

Chapter 1 Section 4: El carácter fetichista de la mercancía y su secreto

Position within Marx's theory: How things get concealed, how things become misterious, how things get buried...

Enigmatic character... appears as a relationship between things, hides a relationship between people, a social relationship

Inseparabilidad

DH: People under capitalism don't relate to each other as persons, but they relate through each other through the objects they encounter in the market...

Ramifications:

1/ "We can't possibly know the social relations that go – vg – into our breakfast..."

“I used to begin my Geography classes with the question: Where does your breakfast come from?

The social relationships between things mediate the social relationships between us...

A social hieroglyphic

The labor theory of value

Who is in control? Do the producers control the system? Or is it the other way around? (Adam Smith...)

The regulative principle is the necessary mean social labor – not the supply and demand fluctuations...

[2nd part of the fetishism of the commodity: the world of thought]

DH: The notion of fetishism suggest that there is a deep way of looking at something other that it appears in the surface

But... The surface appearance are not simple illusions. Things appear as they really are...

Otras perspectivas

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

The semiotic sign

Jean Baudrillard applied commodity fetishism to explain the subjective feelings of men and women towards consumer goods in the "realm of circulation"; that is, the cultural mystique (mystification) that advertising ascribed to the commodities (goods and services) in order to encourage the buyer to purchase the goods and services as aids to the construction of his and her cultural identity. In the book For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972), Baudrillard developed the semiotic theory of "the Sign" (sign value) as a development of Marx's theory of commodity fetishism and of the exchange value vs. use value dichotomy of capitalism.

Social alienation

In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord presented the theory of "du spectacle" — the systematic conflation of advanced capitalism, the mass communications media, and a government amenable to exploiting those factors. The spectacle transforms human relations into objectified relations among images, and vice versa; the exemplar spectacle is television, the communications medium wherein people passively allow (cultural) representations of themselves to become the active agents of their beliefs. The spectacle is the form that society assumes when the Arts, the instruments of cultural production, have been commodified as commercial activities that render an æsthetic value into a commercial value (a commodity). Whereby artistic expression then is shaped by the person's ability to sell it as a commodity, that is, as artistic goods and services.

Capitalism reorganises personal consumption to conform to the commercial principles of market exchange; commodity fetishism transforms a cultural commodity into a product with an economic "life of its own" that is independent of the volition and initiative of the artist, the producer of the commodity. What Karl Marx critically anticipated in the 19th century, with "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof", Guy Debord interpreted and developed for the 20th century — that in modern society, the psychologic intimacies of intersubjectivity and personal self-relation are commodified into and as discrete "experiences" that can be bought and sold. The Society of the Spectacle is the ultimate form of social alienation that occurs when a person views his or her being (self) as a commodity that can be bought and sold, because he or she regards every human relation as a (potential) business transaction. (See: Entfremdung, Marx's theory of alienation)