Talk:Commodity fetishism/Archive 1

NPOV

Ok -- So I removed inauthentic from the lead sentence describing commodity fetishism, as well as confused, as I believe they give commodity fetishism a bad rap. Ok! 04:42, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Misreading

This appears to present a misreading of the theory. It is not Marx's claim that fetishism arises in the sphere of consumption (nor yet advertising), but that capitalism profoundly disconnects people's social activity (labouring to contribute to the common wealth) from their consciousness, making social relations appear to them as relations between inanimate objects - commodities, especially universal equivalents such as gold. Pending other opinions, I'll attempt to add depth in due course. Adhib

- Have now finished plumbing, pending exhaustive essay. Comments welcome Adhib 23:58, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Disappointed to see my correx expunged. The original crude misrepresentation of the theory has been restored (doesn't that one owe more to Jean Baudrillard than Marx?). Pending comment from the relevant editors, I plan to find a simpler way to present both the crude and the sophisticated accounts in this article. Adhib

---

I reverted a recent rewrite because it was poorly written. Someone put at least one sentence of that rewrite back in and I still think it is very poorly written. I am referring to the second sentence of the current version, which has three problems. First, it suggests what the "aim" of "commodity fetishism" is. Concepts do not have aims, people who use concepts have aims. I suspect Marx developed the concept for many reasons, not just one. And although this sentence does point to one correct and valuable effect of using the concept, I see no basis for saying that it is the aim. Second, the word "capture" is at best highly idiomatic. It doesn't make sense to me and I think will confuse many readers. Encyclopedias, whose contributors aim to present information to a broad audience, should rely on plain English. Finally, the sentence is wishy-washy (using "may" or "might" or somesuch word). I do not think it adds subtlety or sophistication to the article, I think it is confusing. Slrubenstein

Thanks for this explanation. If I understand you correctly, your revert was motivated by style problems, not problems of substance. I'll sort out my style and have another attempt. Adhib 23:41, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay! In the process, try not to cut content -- add new information, but don't just cut what others worked on. Slrubenstein

I can't see a way to preserve the erroneous presentation without preserving the error. Hoping the 2nd attempt is clearer. Adhib 00:17, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, maybe it would be a good idea for you to spell out what, exactly, is the error you want to fix, here, since this is a collaborative project? Slrubenstein

Justification for major edit

Naturally this is a collaborative project. My first action on this article was to register my observations here, and canvass responses. I have made no serious changes without first seeking out others' views. That said, SIrubenstein's request suggests that my initial explanation was not accessible enough. Please ignore this longer explanation if the first sufficed:

1. The section ending 'Marx's theory of commodity fetishism proposes to explain this phenomenon' is straightforwardly false. Marx's theory makes no claims in that direction - it has nothing to do with advertizing, or with imparting magical or mystical powers to the consumer. If this were an article discussing Jean Baudrillard's System of Objects such thoughts might be relevant.

This article is not on "Marx's theory," it is on a concept. As the orginal article states, the concept was developed by Marx. But that does not mean that the article must restrict itself to Marx's view. First, you cut the material on its origin in the history of religion, which provides context -- whyh? Second, you cut the sentence on "advertizing." I agree this sentence was poorly stated and gave the implication that Marx said it. But the sollution is not to cut the sentence, the solution is to rewrite it ascribing it to later thinkkers like Baudrillard and perhaps Benjamin. Do not cut useful content -- ADD necessary information. Slrubenstein

The article as it stood referred to no other thinkers than Marx, and claimed that Marx's theory was aimed at solving something which you concede was actually irrelevant to Marx. Fine. I will paste the stuff about advertizing into a separate section concerning developments in the concept after Marx.

The Fetishism of Commodities is the keystone in Marx's analysis of a historically specific social form, known in political economy as 'value'. It has no connection whatsoever to silly Marge Simpson thinking a new handbag makes her look sexy.

I went back over the previous version and didn't find any reference to Marge Simpson's handbag. Be that as it may, to find that a handbag makes one "sexy" is to ascribe to the handbag a particular use value which is very much tied up with value and thus commodity fetishism. Whether Marx said this or not is irrelevant as this is not an article on Marx. What is important is whether the example is consistent with some use of the concept "historical fetishism" and if so, it is worth keeping -- although perhaps in need of development and clarification. Slrubenstein

It's not clear to me what established concept we are discussing - it seems I have removed a concept which you understand as commodity fetishism, one which you initially believed was due to Marx, but which is not clearly referenced in alternative source material. Perhaps you need to add stuff on Benjamin (?) in the new section.

2. There followed a section attempting to summarize the analysis contained in the other three sections of Chapter One of Capital. This section was not too far off being true, but its relevance was shaky, at best.

My advice: if you think the relevance is shaky, do not cut someone else's work -- that opinion is not strong enough. If you think it is utterly irrelevant of course, that iks another matter -- I merely focus on the word you chose, "shaky," which is somewhat qualified. Since Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism comes at the end of the first chapter of Capital, it seems reasonable to think that he found the former analysis relevant to the latter. Even if you disagree, you should not be surprised that others find it relevant too. I am sorry, but your own taste is not adequate justification to cut someone else's work. Cut indeed if there is no conceivable relevance. Otherwise, add information to correct and contextualize. Slrubenstein

My intent is only to aid comprehension of the concept, not to denigrate the work of others. I believe that my rewording of Marx's argument from the first three sections of chapter 1, avoiding his jargon (which begs further explanation), is more likely to impart some of the logic of his argument. That said, I have attempted to weave in your alternative method of explaining the logic.

3. The article concluded with a nonsensical 'illustration' which further muddled the explanatory value of what came before. Adhib 17:15, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

According to whom? How? I think you misunderstood what I meant before when I asked you to explain your changes. This sentence amounts to "I don't like it" or "I don't agree." Well, actually I figured out that you didn't like it or didn't agree. The question is, why? Just to say it is muddled or nonsensical is really just to express your own distaste, not to explain it. Sorry buddy, but when working with others, part of the work is making or own opinions accountable to others. Slrubenstein

Thanks for the advice. Perhaps you could explain to me here what the illustration illustrates, since I have failed to follow its logic. Then I'd be in a better position to see how to reinstate it.

I have pointed out a few passages that you cut, apparently without adequate justification. I urge you to put them back into the article, and encourage you to do so in a way that avoids the problem you saw (i.e. provide the correct ascription, put them in a separate paragraph, add a transition -- whatever). As for the last example, you still need to explain yourself. Slrubenstein

The history of religion point is reintegrated in the intro. I have made a new section dealing with post-Marx versions of the theory, for your points and with what I know of Baudrillard's take on the topic included. I don't know anything about Benjamin - perhaps you could expand? Also, the illustration you wanted to preserve is in there. I guessed at where it should sit, but you'll maybe need to improve that or pin it down with a link or two to the relevant theorists. I think that just leaves the issue of the logical presentation from Capital 1.1.i-iii. I've added a par on that to the article. It boils down to an editorial decision, whether or not to open up the can of worms that is Marx's complex category, value. I think that's an issue best left to one side, for clarity here. Adhib

Start from somewhere else?

(I got here by googling a particularly cogent sentence found in an otherwise muddled student essay - not sure which of you it belongs to, but it did stand out!).

It seems to me that the essence of Marx's argument on commodity fetishism rests on 3 foundations. First, despite what Marx says in Cap. I, Ch1.4, the essence of 'fetishism' per se is transference, and was first coined in C19th anthropology - a witch doctor may cure the patient through his skill with the lotions and potions that folk wisdom has suggested might be relevant to the symptoms expressed by the patient - but the kudos for effecting the cure does not go to the witch doctor himself, but to the bag of bones, mandrake root, etc, that he waves over the lotioned and potioned patient, while chanting the magic spell that follows the application of the lotions and potions. His skills in diagnosis, prescription and treatment, which are objectively responsible for the cure, have been transferred to his bag of bones, his fetish. Freud makes use of the same concept in his writings on sexual fetishism - a woman's sexual power is transferred to some external object particularly associated with her - shoes, I believe, frequently feature importantly here.

Second, is the significance of labour's species-affirming properties. What for Marx distinguishes humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom is its ability to make tools, because what this uniquely demonstrates is material evidence of the ability, unique to men and women, imaginatively to project themselves into the future, i.e., to imagine a future with themselves in it ("what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees" - the downside is that we are the only animals able to imagine a future without ourselves in it - the only animals to be aware of our own mortality, but that's another story). This is why labour affirms our humanity.

Third, is the essence of capitalism, to be found in the labour contract - it is this that distinguishes capitalism (shorthand here for 'bourgeois mode of production') from feudalism - employer and employee go into contract negotiations, no matter how perfunctory these may be, as legal equals: free labour is the conditio sine qua non for capitalism to exist.

The distinction between labour time and labour power that the labour contract conceals, accounts for commodity fetishism. As employee, you contract, in return for wages, to alienate your skills and creativity, the things that makes you human, for another to dispose of as they wish. Those skills and creativity are put to use to produce commodities - items embodying your alienated labour power, but now the property of the employer and intended to make a profit for him, and which cannot now affirm your humanity.

This is to suggest, as Sayer (1991 - Capitalism and Modernity - an excursus on Marx and Weber) argues, that for Marx, commodity fetishism is "a social process, not a cateqory error". It is capitalist commodity production, carried out in and through the terms agreed in the labour contract, that effects the fetishistic transference of skills and creativity from the labourer to the commodity.

The other, not to be neglected, aspect of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is that social relations in general no longer rest on custom and practice, of mutually understood ties of obligation and servitude. We perform services for others because we are contracted to, not because we are obliged to. The centrality of contractual relations in civil society mean that we at the one and same time enter into objective, contractual relations with others, at the same time as we enter into personal relations with objects ("relations between persons expressed as a relation between things" Cap.Vol 1, Ch.1 ftn 28).

As to contemporary Marxist and social theory, it seems to me that commodity fetishism is used as an explanation for the stability of advanced capitalist societies. Given that commodity fetishism is not a category error, a perfectly logical response to the alienation suffered under capitalist labour relations is to indulge in a little retail therapy, in the hope that some of the magic will rub off on you (I have an ad before me, which asks 'What will your slim, stylish and powerful Dell laptop say about you?' - I paraphrase, but only slightly). Of course, that indulgence realises the profits which keep the system going and helps explain why there has never been a successful Marxist revolution in an advanced capitalist country, contrary to Marx's own expectations about where any such revolution might occur. Hence, in an ironical turn, Marxism ends up explaining social stability rather than campaigning for social change.

I appreciate that this is likely to be regarded as a short essay rather than an encyclopaedia entry, which is why I shan't be trying to amend your own work. But in any revision, I do think that you ought to consider incorporating the importance of contractual relations in civil society (I once heard Eric Hobsbawm give a lecture on this subject many years ago, which led me to develop this 'take' on commodity fetishism), and specifically the importance of the labour contract in not only disguising exploitation but also in effecting the transference of skills and creativity from labourer to product - which is what makes this transference not simply fetishism, but commodity fetishism. --Paulredfern1 18:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Commodity fetishism and alienation

Hi, I have removed the assertion that the theory of commodity fetishism replaces that of alienation. I am aware of no evidence for this view. Evidence would need to include:

1. Quotations from the 'later Marx', showing where he refutes his 'earlier' theory of alienation, where he denies what he once affirmed.
2. Explanation of (a) what the theories have in common (the problems they answer, the premises they use); and (b) how they differ, in those respects. This is necessary to show how one of them can be said to replace another, whilst not falling foul of the same presumed errors.

Cheers, Breadandroses 12:20, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I think quite obviously this needs to be added as well for clarification. Simply because most who see a break between early Marx and a more muture Marx see Commodity fetishism as a more scientific view. That is, the very fact within the circles that speak of Marx the concept of Commodity Fethishism being a replacement of Alienated Labor is popular. There is quite frankly no need of evidence from the writings of Marx to establish this point, since the project here isn't to establish a fully corressponding theory to that of Marx. That is a project of Dogmatism, while this is a project of clarification of such given term and its implications and its understanding to others. --68.198.123.73 23:41, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Important Piece Missing?

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) delves into commodity fetishism a bit and predates Capital vol 1 (1867). In the Contribution, Marx does his analysis of exchange-value and shows it to be unique to the bourgeois mode of production. He then looks at how exchange-value disguises the true source of a commodity's value by making it seem like a given commodity has value because it is worth a certain amount of someone else's commodity. The truth, as Marx demonstrates, is that value comes from labour. This appearance is what leads bourgeois economists to believe that supply and demand and scarcity play larger roles in determining value than they actually do. If it is agreed that this should be added, I can probably write this all a lot better and do references. CmdrRamon 07:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the way you put it is much closer to the mark than what is written in the current revision. IMO the article is in such a mess that it is almost beyond repair. A complete rewrite is in order, though the section on later influences can be kept. Khawaga (talk) 18:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Someone want to fix this?

This prose is really terrible, like second-year ESL student terrible. I'd edit it myself, but I'm not sure what it's even trying to say:

It is important to remember, as philosopher Slavoj Zizek points out that according to Marx, we cannot see the commodity fetish as simply an illusion to be dispelled by critical awareness -- hence Marx's "theological niceties" -- it is instead not a secret, as everyone well knows, that it is a concrete unit of open social exchange, as for example a coin which is treated not as a physical, perishable thing -- since it is replaced automatically by the mint. Yet currencies seem to have a life of their own, going up and down unpredictably, but this is only because we treat them according to their own "real" concept. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.175.113 (talk) 03:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The paragraph is still there, I found it hard to read too. Annoyingly, I couldn't look to the primary source to find what Zizek in fact wrote because there was no external link.

--Spokeydoke80 (talk) 05:38, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Damage Reversed

As noted above and in my edit comments severe degradation of this article which I hadn't noticed till now, some of the most significant, the removal of the primary and canonical source, apparently unintentionally by a bot. Have reversed these, merged with current content, and wikified the trailing front matter. Lycurgus (talk) 01:58, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what I meant by "above" above, but I think I also started the previous thread ("Someone want to ..."). The passage there can be contrasted with my text. German is my second language, not English. Lycurgus (talk) 12:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Reversion of last edit

Text was not mangled, nor does the ref tag loose its purpose as an ordinary footnote. On the contrary the edits were simplistic, crude, and distorting, including non-sentences and other compositional and factual errors so simply reverted en-masse instead of trying to fold into my last edit as would be my normal practice for a useful edit. Maybe start a version of this article in the Simple English wiki? Lycurgus (talk) 10:54, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Footnotes aren't refs, lets break down the structure of the current two paras, starting "According to Marx,"?

According to Marx most things people can use were produced through isolated human labor.

This sentence contains the following paranethetical observations that deserve their own sentences ", people value objects that they can use (i.e. objects that have "use-value"), and before the rise of a division of labor and the class-structured society based on it," Also you've got the verb and object terribly late in the sentence.

Even primitive societies have exchange economies, however, where people can use one object to acquire another through barter; goods thus take on "exchange-value".

Unnecessary join through However. Split into separate sentences.

Eventually the development of productive forces reaches the stage of industrialization where individual and small producers are, as a result of the ascent of the capitalist mode of production and accumulation which drives that development, reduced to a marginal element or eliminated entirely[1].

Clearer as two or more sentences. Late verb "reduced". Verb before subclause much much clearer.

People within capitalist societies find their material life organized through the medium of commodities. They trade their labour-power (which in Marx's view is a commodity) for a special commodity, money, and use those wages to claim various other items of socialized production.

Why constantly breaking out into subclauses?

When that socialized production is that organized under the capitalist mode, human labour power, rather than being seen as the source of values generally, becomes itself another commodity and takes on an exchange-value which is seen as objectively determined by a supply and demand market just as with any other commodity.

3 sents in one, late verb and complex verb "becomes itself another commodity and takes on". Two many verb constructions for clear descent of relationships and explanation of processes.

Thus, labour power, the thing that creates value, becomes confounded with its concrete but still abstracted (as commodities) residue which results from its application. Conversely to projecting people as commodities, commodities are also (principally the universal money commodity) seen as having power over the people who produce them.

First sent has a parenthesis subclause immediately after the verb phrase. "Conversely to projecting people as commodities" is gibberish.

It isn't simple English to restrict the number of dangling and contained subclauses. Its good English. Verbs direct in your face, clear objects and subjects, introduce major concepts one sent at a time. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Worker's creativity

This article refers to commodity fetishism masking the creativity of the average worker. Does anyone have a source for Marx actually saying this? Because, perhaps foolishly, I incorperated some points made in this Wikipedia page into an essay-plan; this 'creative' assumption seems to be unfounded, but I could be wrong? --Joewithajay (talk) 21:27, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

recent edit

I have edited a good deal, including the quote from Zizek. While this may dismay many graduate students and European or East Coast intellectuals, my only motive has been this: to make this article intelligible to the average Wikipedia audience, which includes h8gh school students and adult non-academics.

I think more can and should be added to the article but it should not come from marx or Zizek. Why not Michael Taussig? Or other very contemporary and practical examples of commodity fetishism? John Berger?

I think this version is more intelligible than what cam before but hope others will continue working on it but in the same spirit. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:52, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You might want to try spell checking your edits and sourcing them. Fifelfoo (talk) 11:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I just fixed the spelling errors the ones I caught , obviously if you catch any others, you too can help Wikipedia by correcting them). The source is provided at the top of the article and I see no need to repeat what is already in the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You cite no sources for your novel interpretation of Marx. This is OR. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

No, citing no sources is a violation of V and CS. What would make it OR is the novel interpretation. But obviously I do not think it is a novel interpretation and this is the second time you have claimed it violates OR without providing any explanation whatsoever as to how it violates OR (saying it violates OR by providing a novle interpretation is either insultingly coy - is this your intent? - or just lazy, verging on tautology. It certainly is not an explanation of how it violates NOR.

FifelFoo, you may wish to review WP:AGF and WP:OWN. Wikipedia articles are written through consensus and collaboration. Someone just posted a comment to this page as it the article's unintelligibility. I revised it, with an eye towards clarity. If you think what I wrote has original research, why not discuss it on this talk page? maybe you and I working together can fix the problem. Why try to start a revert war when you have the option of working together with another editor? Slrubenstein | Talk 12:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

You might want to AGF yourself and not accuse me. To step through how your novel interpretation is OR:

You think something about Marx without reference to the appropriate scholarly written works.

You write what you think about Marx.

As this is an article about a theory of Marx, its appropriate sourcing basis is interpretations of Marx.

You have written up your own personal interpretation of Marx.

Providing a personal interpretation on an article whose source basis is interpretations is Original Research.

Your decision not to cite works, and your claim "The source is provided at the top of the article." clearly indicates you think that your interpretation of the general works of Marx is a sufficient source for the text you provide. Until you can source your claims to a specific thinker, please revert yourself. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The version you restored did not cite any works, even though I infer from your zealous refusal to let anyone else edit it that it is your interpretation of Marx. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:14, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

But let me add - if you still have NPOV or NOR issues, I would be glad to work with you to craft a better version of what we have. My only intention is to make the article accessible to others by removing jargon and explaining things more clearly. I see no reason why two (or even more) people cannot work together to improve a text. I do not understand your black-or-white, either/or approach to editing. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I have substantially rewritten the Marx part of the article to correspond better to what Marx actually says about commodity fetishism. User:Jurriaan 11:51 24 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.136.223.40 (talk)

Concern about vandalism by Banej

There is this guy called Banej who wrecks the edits I am trying to do on this article to improve it. If he persists in this, I will lodge a formal complaint. User:Jurriaan 4 September 2010 9:57 (UTC)

Example

I have restored the text under the example heading, which was removed leaving a blank. If others object the text of the example, it would be a good idea either to substitute a better example and/or explain the objection to the example on this talk page. I think that there ought to be an illustration anyhow to assist the reader. User:Jurriaan 9 December 2010 22:40

intro: is this the correct definition of "commotdity fetishism?"

"said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things (commodities and money). Commodity fetishism is not unique to capitalist societies, because commodity trade has occurred in one way or another for thousands of years"

Where does Marx say this? I thought in Capital he pegs it to the commodification of labor (not just market trade, but more specific relations of production - as the article quotes, "This Fetishism of commodities has its origin, as the foregoing analysis has already shown, in the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them") and that it is therefore unique to capitalism. The fetishism of, say, the "savages of Cuba" is not commodity fetishism. When historians and sociologicists 9or anthropologists) of religion talk about "fetishism" they are not talking about commodity fetishism; MArx's whole point is that just as "savages" have one kind of fetish, people in capitalist societies have another kind - "commodity" - fetishes. If he says otherwise can we have a proper citation? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

When Marx refers to "the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them", he means commodity production, which involves that privately owned labour can be socially recognized only per medium of the exchange-values of commodities traded in markets. That's quite clear from the passage itself. Marx makes it abundantly clear in the first chapters of Das Kapital and elsewhere that the production of commodities (wares for sale) is not unique to capitalism. He explains that in the first instance, the trading relation was C-M-C' (a commodity is traded with money to obtain another commodity which has at least an equivalent value) but that as markets expand, the trading relation is also inverted: M-C-M' (money purchases a commodity to obtain more money) which is the chrematistic (capitalistic) trading relation. Eventually, this capitalist relation subordinates the whole production process to itself, so that the relation M-C...P...C'-M' emerges; the circulation and production of commodities becomes a unified whole. Contrary to what many Marxists claim, the existence of commodities (wares for sale) does not presuppose capitalist relations of production at all. If Marx had argued perchance that markets for commodities were unique to capitalism, he would be flying into the face of the facts provided by economic historians, anthropologists and archaeologists across hundreds of years. I have explained this further in articles such as value-form and commodity production. Marx argued that commodity trade begins at the boundaries of ancient communities which at first trade incidental surpluses. However, modern archaeological research casts doubt on that hypothesis, i.e. commodities were also traded at a very early stage within the communities of ancient civilisations. When Marx defines the capitalist mode of production as "generalized commodity production" (veralgemeinte Warenproduktion) he means precisely that, whereas commodity production preceded capitalism, it was not "generalized", i.e. it was not the case that all or most of the factors of production took the form of commodities. Consequently, in pre-capitalist societies not all inputs and outputs of production were commodities, and the production process itself was therefore mostly not transformed to be capitalist in character. Since, however, the phenomena of wage labour, commodities and money are historically not unique to capitalism (as Marx very well knew himself, having studied the Roman empire etc.), then the fetish of commodities is not unique to capitalism either. At best you can say that the fetish attains a more specific, much more pervasive and developed form in capitalist society, as indicated in the article. I suppose though that I should dig out a few good pre-capitalist examples of commodity fetishism to clinch this point. I suppose also some controversy will always remain, since historians and social scientists still disagree about the definition of capitalism, and when exactly it first emerged; different definitions and periodizations are mooted. In particular, capitalist merchant trade and capitalist rent-seeking attained considerable scope before capitalist production ever existed on any significant scale. When Marx discusses primitive accumulation, his point is precisely that in order for all the factors of production (land and labour) to be converted into saleable commodities, all kinds of big changes in property rights and technical changes are required. But that does not mean that commodity trade did not exist before that time, and just dropped out of the air in 1750 or something (joint-stock arrangements already existed in ancient Sumeria) - indeed, it is exactly because that already existing markets could not expand without removing all kinds of social obstacles (such as hereditary rights to land, property and subsistence) that gives rise to the phenomena of primitive accumulation. It's something that, it could be argued, continues worldwide to this very day, to the extent that privatization is still an ongoing process. It is true that the concept of a "fetish", as such, is not the same as "commodity fetishism", but the article does not say that either; it merely traces out briefly the origin and evolution of Marx's use of the term, and where he got it from. Marx understood the idea of fetishization long before he explained materialistically how it naturally arose out of the social relations of commodity trade. Unfortunately many Marxists not thoroughly familiar with Marx's work and thought, but pretending supreme radicality, and lacking any serious historical knowledge, have misrepresented the issue, and teach people things which are simply not true, either in historical fact or in terms of textual exegesis. The point about the savages of Cuba is not that the savages had a fetish, but that the Cubans ridiculed the gold fetish of the Spaniards. For the Spaniards, gold had a supreme value which it did not have for the savages, even when there existed no capitalist mode of production yet in Spain... if they could uplift the gold and transport it to Spain (in point of fact, a lot of the gold was used in Spain to adorn churches and cathedrals, i.e. the robbery was dedicated to the greater glory of God). As Marx notes in his 1844 Paris manuscripts (section: "The power of money"), William Shakespeare already wrote about the gold fetish in the 16th century. I intend to complete all the necessary footnoting and referencing in future, and make the story more exact. User:Jurriaan 12 december 2010 17:40 (UTC)

Why on earth are you going on about how commodity production predates capitalism? Where on earth did I ever suggest that it didn't? The point remains that commodity fetishism occurs not in market socieies but in capitalism - that mode of production where people relate to one another principally as "owners of commodities." Marx is not talking about a market economy where the butcher exchanges meat for bread fom the baker, he is talking about the capitalist economy where a worker exchanges his labor power for wages. It is only when labor becomes a commodity that the use value of labor is displaced onto money in a generalized form. In the Grundrisse when Marex criticizes bastiat he refers explicitly to wage-labor, and in Results of the Immediate Process of Production he is explicitly talking about capitalism. Now, if you want to argue that there have ben other theories of commodity fetishism besides Marx's, fine, as long as you have a reliable source that says so explicitly. Mut if we are talking about Marx's theory let's get it right. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:07, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, the statement in the article to which you objected was that "Commodity fetishism is not unique to capitalist societies, because commodity trade has occurred in one way or another for thousands of years". I have explained that at least for Marx, it was clear that commodity trade existed for thousands of years before the capitalist mode of production began to spread across the globe. The fetish of commodities therefore predates the capitalist mode of production. When Marx discusses commodity fetishism in Das Kapital, he isn't even discussing the capitalist mode of production yet. He was talking about the fetishism that attaches to commodities, not the fetishism that attaches to the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism just generalizes social forms which already existed long before capitalism existed plus it creates new social forms. When the Spanish manifested their gold fetish in their colonial conquests in Latin America in the 16th century, there was no capitalist mode of production in Spain to speak of, only merchants, bankers and rentiers. How do you explain that? User:Jurriaan 16 December 2010 18:51 (UTC)

Just to clinch my case: in the very section on commodity fetishism, Marx comments (according to one old official translation: "The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

It is clear from this passage that Marx considers the fetish of commodities to exist already in the "most undeveloped form" of commodity production, but precisely because undeveloped, the fetish is "still relatively easy to see through". Admittedly, both the official English translations are lousy and inaccurate.

The German text is: "Da die Warenform die allgemeinste und unentwickeltste Form der bürgerlichen Produktion ist, weswegen sie früh auftritt, obgleich nicht in derselben herrschenden, also charakteristischen Weise wie heutzutag, scheint ihr Fetischcharakter noch relativ leicht zu durchschauen." Literally translated, "Since the commodity form is the most general and least developed form of bourgeois production - which is why it makes its appearance already early on, though not in the same dominant, characteristic way as today - its fetish character is still relatively easy to see through".

It takes an ignorant Marxist to deform Marx's own viewpoint into something which he never committed himself to. Marx is clearly committed to the idea that the fetish of commodities is bound up with the whole epoch of commodity production, not just with the "generalized commodity production" of the capitalist epoch. Case closed; I hope readers will not tire me with further false objections. User:Jurriaan 17 December 2010 23:08 (UTC)

It sounds to me like this is your own interpretation of Marx. That is a violation of WP:NOR. Do you have a reliable secondary source on Marx or commodity fetishism that supports your personal views? Slrubenstein | Talk 00:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Hrrmph, here we go again. Well, I have provided you with textual evidence and provided a brief exposition of Marx's argument as stated in Capital Vol. 1. It is really quite simple; if there is commodity production, then, irrespective of whether this production happens to take a capitalist form or a petty-bourgeois form or some other form (in the sense that Marx defines all that in Capital Vol. 1) there is the potential for commodity fetishism; it is simply an intrinsic effect of the existence of commodities, their production and the trade in them. It is just that the nature and power of the fetish, i.e. the extent of its development and pervasiveness, might differ according to the scope reached by commodity trade in society, and thus also, that the modalities of commodity fetishism may vary according to place and time. Now, whereas I have provided evidence, you provide NONE, only assertion. This is not acceptable. You need to prove, that Marx restricted the existence and applicability of commodity fetishism exclusively to the capitalist mode of production. But, point is, you haven't done it, while I show that Marx did not believe this at all! I am certainly open to correction - the article should fairly represent at least Marx's viewpoint - but if there is no proof that I've got it wrong, then I have no reason to change the article. So if you can supply textual evidence which proves that Marx thought commodity fetishism is a specifically capitalist phenomenon, an effect of the capitalist mode of production, rather than something which emerges out of commodity trade as such, please do so. The only alternative I can suggest, is that we insert a statement to the effect that some scholars (who?) believe that commodity fetishism exists only in capitalist production, and that it fell out of the air one fine day in 1750 or something like that. As regards "reliable sources", I prefer to stick with what Marx himself says about the matter since Marx-interpreters so often get it wrong. So if Marx says the fetish already exists in the "most undeveloped form" of bourgeois production, that is to say, commodity-exchange among small independent (urban) producers, and if some nebulous scholar says that commodity fetishism is an effect of capitalist production employing wage-labour, then I prefer to stick with Marx. And if I do so, I am consistent with the evidence of economic history as well. User:Jurriaan 3:38 19 December 2010 (UTC)

You are being unfair. I provided evidence above: quotes from the Grundrisse and Results of the Immediate Process of Production where Marx is explicitly talking about capitalism. The social relations of labor that he links to commodity fetishism is wage labor, i.e. capitalism. He is not saying that it exists wherever one finds commodities i.e. market economies which have existed for thousands of years. What is your point about "that it fell out of the air one fine day?" Such sarcasm shows a failure to assume good faith (or are you just a nasty person in general?). Marx doesn't claim commodity fetishism fell out of the air, he ties it to a specific social condition.. When Marx refers to "the peculiar social character of the labour that produces them", he is talking about the peculiar character of commoditized labor, when labor itself becomes a commodity.

Moreover, you distort his account of native Cubans in the 1842 article in the Rheinische Zeitung - he is not referring in that instance to commodity fetishism but rather to fetishism in the original sense of the term as used by historians of religion; the point is that native Cubans were fetishists and they believed that the Spaniards fetishized gold. He is talking about the beliefs of the native Cubans, not the beliefs of the Spaniards. True, this is a critical passage in Marx's work, because it is one of the things he read that led him to make the point that people in capitalist societies have their own fetishes, namely commodity fetishes. But he is not saying that the Spaniards were commodity fetishists, he is saying that "savages" recognized in Spaniards something familiar, what historians of religion called "fetishism" (which, for historians of religion, is not linked to the commoditization of labor).

You seem to miss the point that "fetishism" existed for a verrrrrry long time before "commodity fetishism" and there are different kinds of fetishes. The Spanish fetishization of gold is intelligible in terms of the political economy of mercantilism. It is not the same thing as commodity fetishism, which characterizes capitalist societies today. Without this distinction, readers will mis the entire point of Marx's critique of capitalism. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Original Research Concerns

It takes an ignorant Marxist to deform Marx's own viewpoint into something which he never committed himself to. Marx is clearly committed to the idea that the fetish of commodities is bound up with the whole epoch of commodity production, not just with the "generalized commodity production" of the capitalist epoch. Case closed; I hope readers will not tire me with further false objections. User:Jurriaan 17 December 2010 23:08 (UTC)

It sounds to me like this is your own interpretation of Marx. That is a violation of WP:NOR. Do you have a reliable secondary source on Marx or commodity fetishism that supports your personal views? Slrubenstein | Talk 00:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Hrrmph, here we go again. Well, I have provided you with textual evidence and provided a brief exposition of Marx's argument as stated in Capital Vol. 1. It is really quite simple; if there is commodity production, then, irrespective of whether this production happens to take a capitalist form or a petty-bourgeois form or some other form (in the sense that Marx defines all that in Capital Vol. 1) there is the potential for commodity fetishism; it is simply an intrinsic effect of the existence of commodities, their production and the trade in them. It is just that the nature and power of the fetish, i.e. the extent of its development and pervasiveness, might differ according to the scope reached by commodity trade in society, and thus also, that the modalities of commodity fetishism may vary according to place and time. Now, whereas I have provided evidence, you provide NONE, only assertion. This is not acceptable. You need to prove, that Marx restricted the existence and applicability of commodity fetishism exclusively to the capitalist mode of production. But, point is, you haven't done it, while I show that Marx did not believe this at all! I am certainly open to correction - the article should fairly represent at least Marx's viewpoint - but if there is no proof that I've got it wrong, then I have no reason to change the article. So if you can supply textual evidence which proves that Marx thought commodity fetishism is a specifically capitalist phenomenon, an effect of the capitalist mode of production, rather than something which emerges out of commodity trade as such, please do so. The only alternative I can suggest, is that we insert a statement to the effect that some scholars (who?) believe that commodity fetishism exists only in capitalist production, and that it fell out of the air one fine day in 1750 or something like that. As regards "reliable sources", I prefer to stick with what Marx himself says about the matter since Marx-interpreters so often get it wrong. So if Marx says the fetish already exists in the "most undeveloped form" of bourgeois production, that is to say, commodity-exchange among small independent (urban) producers, and if some nebulous scholar says that commodity fetishism is an effect of capitalist production employing wage-labour, then I prefer to stick with Marx. And if I do so, I am consistent with the evidence of economic history as well. User:Jurriaan 3:38 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I did not ask you to provide proof to support your arguments. I asked you to refrain from violating WP:NOR. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:38, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

What I intend to do (time permitting) is very carefully footnote ALL statements in the whole article, NONE of which are controversial... except to miseducated people. I am trying to create a short reference article that is simple and easy to read, based directly on the original texts and valid scholarship. The problem is not that I am original, but that forgers who get paid a nice academic salary for their "creative ideas" create a secondary literature which makes a very sad mockery of Marx's own views (for detailed illustrations, see for example Hal Draper's five volume work Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution). If I or others then set the record straight, by simply citing the "real thing", it seems that we are "original". But all we are doing is referring to the literal texts, where necessary in the original German, and to scholars who really did do their homework. For example, Louis Althusser, quoted in the article - who himself explicitly admitted in his autobiographical writings that he never studied Marx's writings much, plagiarized his students' ideas and other scholars, and falsified quotations in his own books - was hailed by British rich boy Perry Anderson as a great Marxist thinker, and Althusser's books and papers were widely dessiminated by New Left Books to English-speaking people, who, for the most part, knew nothing about Althusser's life and times anyway. Then, the Althusserian garbage gets presented by academics (who probably speak neither French nor German but nevertheless think themselves very profound) as "the" True Marxism, and students ape this "authorative interpretation" from London and Oslo to Sao Paulo and Auckland. In reality, it is pure bunkum, just as much as the stale Marxism-Leninism that it tries to make more palatable, and anybody who bothers to read the original German texts can easily verify that there exists almost nothing to warrant the "authorative interpretation" cooked up in a French academy, and then spread around the English-speaking world by fashionable New Leftists in lousy translations! The same pattern repeats itself all over again when a new "definitive" Marxist interpretation arises which the academics get infatuated with. User:Jurriaan 20 December 2010 14:37 (UTC)

WP is about verifiable views, not truth. Draper is certainly a reliable source; so are Althusser and Anderson. We present these people's views as wiews, not truth. You may not like them but you cannot use WP to publish your own arguments with them, that violates NOR. What you consider truth is certainly irrelevant to WP. If you wish to publish your argumnts against them you must do it through a real publisher ( a peer-reviewed journal or other press) first before putting it in WP, this is basic WP policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Mr Rubinstein, whoever you are, what you say is a mixture of fact and nonsense. Of course WP is about truth, nobody would use wikipedia if it consisted only of "verifiable lies" about the meaning of a concept. I have cited Draper as a reliable source of illustrations for how Marx has been mangled by sundry academic commentators. Althusser may be a reliable source as far as the views of Althusser are concerned, but he is not a reliable source for what Marx means; the same applies to Anderson, who, by the way, jettisoned his "Marxism" long ago to focus on his career as bourgeois historian. I agree that my own arguments against Anderson and Althusser belong in a proper journal article; if I want to cite arguments against them in a wikipedia article, they must be from a published source which makes those arguments. However, Marx himself is also a source, and if Marx borrowed the notion of fetishism from another author, and if he used the notion of fetishism across three decades in various contexts, that is simply a fact and I can cite that fact, referencing it to Marx's own text. User:Jurriaan 22 December 2010 13:06 (UTC)

"Of course WP is about truth" You are quite simply wrong Jurriaan, please read WP:V, the policy on verifiability. If you claim Marx uses fetishism in different ways across his career and cite Marx this is Original Research and Synthesis, both violations of wikipedia policy. I think you need to read WP:SOAPBOX. Pay attention to our sourcing policy, and rely on Secondary sources. If you are talking about Marx's writings or Marx, the correct source to cite is someone else who wrote (in an academic way or expert way) regarding Marx, and to cite all such people on that point. If you are writing about Althusser, the correct person to cite is someone else who wrote (in an academic way or expert way) regarding Althusser. Of course, the central point is to write the entire article based on the way in which the topic is addressed in academic and expert literature, and in terms of all the ways it is addressed. The first step to writing an article is to read all the high level overviews for specialists regarding the topic, and develop the skeletal structure based on the fundamental debate and coverage at the top level. Althusser may be very relevant to this, as will other authors, but our obligation is to cite _all_ verifiable non-fringe opinions, with appropriate weight as to article space (though we do have unlimited space, and can spawn sub-articles such as "Althusser's theory of Commodity fetishism" as required). Fifelfoo (talk) 01:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Current tagging

An editor has asked me to look at this article as I did some work on it though not as much as some others in the space of Socialism/Marxism, a few of which I started or substantially rewrote. Do see that it has been substantially expanded. Stubbing this thread for now, will try to review and give some input within next week. Lycurgus (talk) 10:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. It's fine if you improve the article and a better article results. However, it would be nice if you could indicate the motivation for possible changes on this talkpage. Several articles I originated or substantially wrote were hacked into without rhyme or reason, and at that point it becomes a waste of time to write anything. User:Jurriaan 15:41 23 December 2010 (UTC)

As to motives, please see WP:AGF. As to "hacking," I am not sure what you mean. If you really think Wikipedia has been hacked, you need to report that to the technical team, maybe here. But if you do not mean "hacked" but simply "edited" or "rewritten" please see WP:OWN. Best of luck, Slrubenstein | Talk 16:26, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware of the meaning of "good faith" and indeed I do write "in good faith". I am also very aware nobody "owns" a wikipedia article, though the article hosted is the property of the wikimedia foundation. That's also why I thanked Lycurgus for wanting to take a look at how things are going with this article. It's just that if somebody takes an axe to what you have written without any explanation on the talk page, and if it results in an article that was worse than the last one, you start to wonder why you bothered to contribute something at all. Certainly, there are many articles I would never contribute to, knowing very well that my edits would be demolished by somebody who considers himself authorative. As against that, most of the stuff I wrote is still there, suggesting I did not do too badly. Main thing is to reference things a lot more. User:Jurriaan 23 December 2010 1:51 (UTC)

I haven't looked at it yet, but my preliminary impression was that it might be an improvement. Bold action is encouraged in this site if it results in improvement. Some wiki policies are contradictory or gamed by individuals but the space of articles on Marxism, Socialism, are not ones where this is likely to stand. However you shouldn't think that because your edits have not been reworked that they won't be. In fact, if you believe that Socialism is the future and that you don't represent the final wisdom on the subject, nor that the school of thought in question is a completed and finished work, you must expect same. In any case I will only post my impression here in this thread. "Commodity fetishism" is too narrow and historically confined a topic for me to get very excited about. It pretty much leaves off just where the general and practical economic problem of the imputation of prices and costs gets interesting. Lycurgus (talk) 03:06, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I have dealt with prices in three separate wiki's: real prices and ideal prices, prices of production and value-form. These topics have not been dealt much with in Marxian theory, at least not in depth, and any scientific discussion of the "fetishism of prices" or the reification of prices is very scarce. User:Jurriaan 12:01 25 December 2010 (UTC).

OK, I've scanned it further and I get the idea. I don't want to comment on it further, but FTR, I don't consider it an improvement. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 03:42, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Criticism

[^There is something wrong with this as 'objectified relationships' cannot be between things, and mystifications and transformations may only be validly objectified in a different layer. Commodity fetishm is subjective and not objective where Marx's analysis is subjective behaviour in the latter end where people are addicted in fetish behaviour rather than making objective contribution to their social organisation. Fetish behaviour is mainained by addictions or material desires etc, not by social relations or objective objective values. - Peter Wilson ]

This comment was inserted in the text of the article, whereas it belongs on this talk page. The criticism is not well-taken, as would be clear if Peter Wilson had read the article and the literature referred to. User:Jurriaan 25 December 2010 23:20 (UTC)

Please do not summarily delete paragraphs without providing a convincing reason on the talk page. User:Jurriaan 26 December 2010 23:39 (UTC)

User:Fifelfoo is a well-respected editor. He deleted a paragraph and he provided a conincing reason in his dit summary. We do not have to provide reasons on the talk page; we can do it in the edit summary. Now, if you do not agre with his reasoning you should AGF and explain why on the talk page and invite him to respond. I think his edit summary reason was a good one. Apparently you not only restored the pragraph but estored it twice. I note that you added a citation but the citation did not respond to Fifelfoo's concern. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:53, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Whether Fifelfoo is a wellrespected editor is neither here nor there. His and your reason for vandalizing my edits is totally wrong. Namely, Marx himself and Isaak Rubin themselves state what I am simply reporting on in the article, in terms which can hardly be misconstrued. In the process of stating Marx's own documented view, my edit is vandalized, because it does not fit with Marxist prejudices or with the prejudices of somebody who thinks of himself as "authorative". If the citation does not correspond to Fifeloo's concern, he could do me the honour of explaining what his concern is, and why the restored bits (which I had not even finished inserting yet!) have been summarily removed. Well, fella's, this ends my work on wikipedia. I will never again work on wikipedia nor donate money to wikipedia, except to insert a comment on my personal page explaining why I have abandoned this work. So you can also not expect me to engage in any further discussion. User:Jurriaan 28 December 2010 00:08 (UTC)

• You're still breaking WP:LEDE by putting evidence in the lede. You should open a subsection of the article on the issue of scope of commodity fetishism. In that section you write, "I Rubin, a major Marxist theorist, considered that Commodity Fetishism universally applied throughout human societies and was the basis of Marx's theory. <ref></ref>..." Then in the lede after completing that section of body, you write a one paragraph note indicating the presence of the information in the body, "Major scholars apply Marx's theory of commodity fetishism to all societies." You can edit within Wikipedia's policies. Rubin is a fine author. The Rubin citation wasn't in the text I removed. You can edit. Marx is a fine author. Citing Marx on Marx is unacceptable due to policy on the use of primary sources and original research. As was just explained here on the article talk page. You can add new content which takes the article in new directions, the appropriate place is in the body of the article first, and then in the lede second according to WP:LEDE. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:51, 27 December 2010 (UTC)]

Notwithstanding Fifelfoo's frauulent claims, I did not write what he says I wrote. User:Jurriaan

@Jurrian - please read WP:AGF and WP:OWN. You are flat out wrong to accuse Fifelfoo of "vandalizing." Wikipedia is the encyuclopedia anyone can edit - you, and Fifloo, and anyone else. To accuse another editor of vandalism whn he is simply trying to improve the article is uncivil behavior. Fifelfoo is quite right about using Marx with care. We have an WP:NOR policy that really you should read, as it explains all of this quite well. Primary sources like marx are important, but they can be interpreted in any variety of ways. You may think your interpretation is"the truth" but Wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiabl views - and the views that go into an article are not those of the editors, but of significant others who have published in reliable sources. Look, if you want to publish your own interpretation of Marx, you are welcome to - just not here. WP is not a venue for your publishing your own views; it is a collaborative project in which we write articles drawing on estalishe dviews from reliable sources. The introductions to articles should introduce th article; points where there may be different interprtations go in the body, and we need to distinguish between different views and attribute views when appropriate (Rubin is a fin source, and his views are important ... although the citation you provided did not suppot your argument). You want to throw a hissy it because you hav encountered some other well-read, careful editors who don't worship every word you have to say about Marx? Okay, if that is your style ... Slrubenstein | Talk 08:20, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I do think it's good that the article is getting attention and is being filled out. I agree with SIrubenstein;s criticism of the content. In the Stalinist states there really was nothing remotely like wiki or wiki culture and bourgeois culture relegates it (Marxist theory) to arcane sectors of academe, e.g: it's not taken seriously as political economy. So a work out of Marxist theory has never really occurred in the way in which it might in these articles. Unfortunately this is also not going to happen here either but for a different reason, namely the policies referred to. Nonetheless the article will in time get the attention it deserves and the level of the material will improve. From a clear understanding of Orthodox Marxist thought, expressed here in a manner expected given the level of competence of public intellectuals in the most advanced capitalist societies only good can come. Right now the main improvement opportunity is the removal of some regrettable and confused material which I can't really stand to look at in detail, so I can't give a survey of it, but the thing with the vending machine/game is an example. A quote from Chomsky is that any political philosophy which is eponymous is probably not worthwhile (referring to Marxism). I think this is essentially correct. It doesn't mean there isn't a great deal of value in Marxist studies, but from the point of view of Wiki as established by its policies, it is essentially dictated that its view of Marxism and the various subtopics will remain within the confines of the eponymous and static thing. Lycurgus (talk) 02:01, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

One other thing I forgot to mention: the so-called wiki "authorities" completely miss the fact that when Marx defines the concept of commodity fetishism in the long quote from Capital Vol. 1 provided in the article (which I did not insert, by the way), Marx explicitly refers to "the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities." This already makes it crystal clear that as far as Marx was concerned, commodity fetishism is an effect which is "inseparable" from commodity production and -as he notes explicitly - the development of the value-form of commodities; the relevant contrast is between market production and non-market production, not capitalist production and non-capitalist production. Since commodity production by small independent proprietors predates capitalist production by many centuries, it logically follows that "the fetishism of commodities" is NOT peculiar to capitalist production. It is merely that capitalist production introduces, according to Marx, new additional forms of fetishization, principally the fetishization of capital. User:Jurriaan 17 January 2010 18:13 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.144.162.215 (talk)

Pulled the state as of my last stretch of edits into my draft space. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 03:20, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Confusion over commodity fetishism

Many authors who have written extensively on commodity fetishism forget to include the heart of what Marx means by commodity fetishism. Marx's definition of commodity fetishism is summarized in the paragraph:

'Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself. The equality of all sorts of human labour is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labour power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labour; and finally the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social character of their labour affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the products.'

"The 'enigmatic character' of the commodity 'arises from this form itself,' i.e., as values, commodities a) 'equalize' different kinds of labour embodied in different products, b) represent a 'measure' of socially necessary labour time by their 'magnitude of value,' and c) embody the social relations of human beings producing in a society of private property, a society with a complex division of labour.

The fetishism of commodities 'arises from the peculiar social character if the labour which produces them.' In other words, it arises in a society in which production is carried out independently and privately, obliging the products to assume or take the role of social relations between the produicers, who in turn act only as the 'bearers' of these products.

The four fundamental points that Marx highlights: 1) one kind of labour is exchanged for another or there is the equation of different kinds of concrete labour (i.e., the equation of use-values, the qualities of labour or different kinds of labour); 2) the measure of the expenditure of labour time in the whole society is bound up by that same exchange or in other words commodities represent a measure of SNLT by their magnitude of value (i.e., equating amounts of labour time or the measure of expenditure of labour time); 3) the relationship between producers takes on the form of social relations between the products of labour (i.e., social relationships between people are mediated by the medium of exchange, the commodity); 4) the exchange of commodities also reflects the social relationship of producers to the sum total of labour as a social relationship between objects (i.e., an individual who buys or purchases a commodity is essentially standing in relationship to the totality of production in the world or the total GNP of the world even though it appears only as a relationship between things).

Jurrian's Departure ...

The user that SIRubenstein and apparently others above are complaining about has stated on his user page that he's no longer editing, so don't see any reason why the edits shouldn't be reverted. Not doing so myself because I think it would be unseemly to back it up to my last edit, and maybe there's a salvage operation to be performed together with the clean-up. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 04:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we should avoid automatic reverts. But one of the faults of Jurrian is that he was presenting his own interpretation of marx. No matter how thoughtful his interpretation was, it is a straightforward violation of WP policy for editors to put their own views into articles. there are a host of interpretations of Marx, even different interpretations of what he meant by commodity fetishism. our job is not to judge whether any of these interpretations are right or wrong - only if they are significant, i.e. rise to a certain level of notability. Herbert Marcuse, Leszak Kolakowsi, Michael Taussig - all are notable. None of us WP editors are. I suggest that the proper way forward is to identify some of the more notable interpretations of Marx and commodity feishism, and provide an account of these different views of commodity fetishism, i.e. find reliable secondary sources as a basis for building the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't entirely agree but the subject of this article carries a minor topic in political economy which I'm choosing not to spend more time on, it's redundant with false consciousness which I may have created. With such a conservative viewpoint I'm sure your redaction will be fine. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 08:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Looks like I didn't edit false consciousness until '07, was created by user:The_Anome, did create Base and superstructure though which is the root phenomenon. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 13:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

... and return

See Talk:Marxian economics. Reviewed the talk history (here), it's less than 500 edits and primarily about 3-4 principal contributors. In any case Marxist theory is 1) exceptionally accessible and well codified in the Marx/Engels Collected Works and 2) various authoritative exegesis exist as do a larger set of wiki editors than the 3-4 that can be consulted so this isn't going to be an endless circle of silliness as can often happen in wiki. Lycurgus (talk) 21:56, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

If Marx himself makes it very explicit that his initial discussion of "the commodity" does NOT presuppose a capitalist mode of production, and that commodity production existed long before capitalist production did (Cap. Vol. 1, p. 273-274 in the Penguin edition), then if some wikipedian "authority" argues that this is just an "interpretation" of Marx's text, he or she is plainly mistaken. It is not an interpretation, but what Marx literally says himself, and one can quote chapter and verse to prove that. If one quotes Marx himself in this sense, this does not portend or intend arrogance of pretentiousness - it merely verifies a fact. It does not really advance the discussion about the article a great deal, if the wikipedian then keeps arguing that pointing out such a plain error of fact is itself an interpretation. It does not help either if Lycurgus, in violation of wiki protocol, keeps swearing at me and calling me nasty names. And it does not help if the very people who insist that others should honour wikipedia protocols dishonour those protocols themselves. User:Jurriaan 16 June 2011 12:44 (UTC)

You probably want to identify who specifically you are addressing. Assume it's not me as I've not weighed in here on any specific article subject matter of fact (as opposed to the wiki editing process) since I was asked to become involved with this. Adjusted your indentation. Work it out with your peers. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 13:06, 16 June 2011 (UTC)