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I need to explain commodity fetishism to some people, and I want to make sure my own understanding of it is in order, more or less. By way of disclaimer, I'm new to thinking about this, so there may well be errors in the below description. It's one of those concepts which I've heard from different angles over the years and never quite grasped how I was supposed to align those different angles. What I type below is my current understanding, and is partially just a practice attempt for me to type it out. However, if I have anything glaringly wrong feel free to point errors out. Thanks to money, the god of commodities, there is a false equivalence between different commodities which are, outside of this social relation, actually not comparable in value. This helps to create an almost religious aspect to 'the commodity' as a thing, and thus to each indiviual commodity. One major effect of this is that the actual social relations involved in production (let's say the harvesting of sugarcane, the synthesisation of caffeine, the production of cans, all involved in the production of a can of coca cola) become invisible to me because I see only the commodity (i.e. the can of coke). Any exploitation, alienation, environmental degradation, child labour, slavery that may have happened in the production of the drink is concealed and legalised at the moment of purchase, because look, it's a can of coke! Can I also use commodity fetishism to explain why people will pay more for this can of coke than a cheaper, supermarket's own brand of coke, even though they are made of the same ingredients? Because I am invested in the fetishisation of commodities, and because I see them as either a) satisfying some desire I have or b) saying something about myself that I want to say (or probably both of these at once?), I pay the extra money for the pretty much identical commodity. Another question, where does this sit with the branding and advertising of coke? Should I include the work that has gone into the creation of their brand, through advertising design but also the physical work of, for eample, erecting billboards? Where does the balance sit between 'the additional value comes from fetishising the commodity' and 'the additional value comes from the labour time put into making the brand', or is it just 'both'? I hope this makes some kind of sense to people who aren't me.
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Apr 11, 2024 12:16
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 02:33 |
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Both really helpful, thank you. Without wanting to flog a dead horse, but because the wider context is that I want to show a Marxist approach to understanding commodities and advertising (at a fairly basic level, I should add)... I understand that trying to quantify the contribution that fetishising commodities makes to the value of a particular commodity was naive. Can I instead see the world of branding and advertising as religious rituals that help to imbue the commodity with its magical properties? So they are manifestations of the fetishisation and worship. Shows like 'Dragons' Den' and 'The Apprentice' take on the role of the old miracle plays, teaching the good capitalist moral tales of the free market. I don't want to stretch the one idea too far, but I like exploring the edges and seeing where the limits are.
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Apr 11, 2024 16:15
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Thanks again, all, lots of helpful explanation and distinction. I remember seeing Terry Eagleton speak years ago and him saying that his favourite examples of commodity fetishism is that the stock market section on the news appears just after, and in much the same way as, the weather forecast. I never quite got that but I do now.
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Apr 12, 2024 08:34
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