Marx: Commodity Fetishism

Marx

• Fetishism is imbuing something with meaning that is not inherent to it
• Commodities are imbued with meaning and value not inherent in the thing itself
• Social relations are transferred into material relations
• Peoples worth is valued by what they produce to exchange on the market
• There is a shift from labor value to use value to exchange value
  • Everything comes to be valued only by its exchange value
  • This is how something becomes a commodity, like a product or a person
• People no longer create things to use, but to sell
• The market and certain people in the market govern exchange value
• Labor itself is valued in terms of exchange value
  • It becomes a commodity
• Commodities start to be treated as if they have value in and of themselves
• Fetishism translates value inherent in commodity itself and separates it from people
  • People actually make things valuable
• People take on power of their own, the power acts back on people and laborers
• Relationships between people are obscured
• Illusion - value and power of commodities come from intrinsic qualities, but actually come from people and their social relations of production and exchange

Species Being

• Distinguishes what makes humans unique
• Consciously and actively produce and create, not just be part of nature but consciously act and build
• Creating things also allows us to create ourselves and rebuild ourselves
• Adaptability and flexibility are key
• Capitalism reverses or sullies that form of productivity
  • Labor is essential to human beings under capitalism
  • But labor is transformed from free, productive, and creative means to ways of survival
• People are supposed to find themselves in work, but under capitalism, they only find themselves outside of work
  • This is tied to working for pay, creating commodity fetishism

4 distinct forms of alienation

• Productive activity includes labor and life activity
  • The more you work, the more reliant you become on the object
  • The object actually becomes the realization of work- worker dehumanized
• Products of labor
  • The only piece of labor you see is the wage made from your productive process, not the object itself, from the people who own the means of production
  • You are unable to afford products you play a role in producing or selling
• Species being and self
  • Estranged labor tears man from the object of his production, tearing from him his species being
  • Estranged labor turns man's species being into a being alien to him, making him a means to individual existence
  • This estranges his own body from him, as it does external nature and his spiritual essence, his human being
  • labor is transformed from a free, productive creative to a means of survival
• Fellow humans
  • People become commodities and dehumanized
  • Vast difference in wages alienates people from each other
  • Money competition and class differences literally separate people
  • Bourgeoisie create competition between proletariat because it benefits them in the end

Materialism

• This is compared to Idealism of Hegel
• Viewing reality is inseparable from human understanding and thought
• Mind over matter

Materialism (Marx)

• Our ideas, understandings, and experiences shape reality and drive social change
• Matter over mind
• Material things exist in the world leading to material contradictions and thus change
• Social conditions and social interest drive action and change
• Position within the economic/class system drives action
  • Your particular experience/position shapes your outlook
  • You are more likely to see economic inequality if you are impacted by it
• Don't simply change because people want change, instead change material things within economic orders to change positions, changing orders to people pushing for change

Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

• "All that is solid melts into air"
• Qualities built into capitalism necessitate instability
• There is constant change and revolution
• Constant disturbances in society makes elements unstable
• "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"
  • The state is in place to manage the interests of one class over another class
  • "Political power, properly so allied, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing the other”
• Problems of capitalism are also argued as the source of its own undoing
• Capitalism - finding and exploiting new areas for profit in a never-ending machine
  • Inherent contradictions and tensions that emerge make it untenable
  • Not sustainable due to climate crisis
  • Natural resources are not thought about in sustainable ways
  • It relies on the planet and the people
  • Extraction has its limits and will eventually give less from human beings
• Creating larger and larger mass of people falling, stagnating from this system

Durkheim

Class

• Masses eventually develop alternative ideology in their own interests
• Class in itself vs class for itself
  • The transition from just being members of a class to seeing themselves as members of a class and working/ideologies in their best interests
• What creates fundamental solidarity
  • Not contract theory
  • There already must be some kind of connection for people to enter a contract in the first place
  • People uphold agreements/promises based on moral obligations
  • Society already exists
• People do things out of a shared sense of moral community, not out of individual interest
  • This is what society is
• Consicence collective can be both a collective conscience or consciousness
  • the shared beliefs ideas and moral attitudes
  • A unifying force
  • It also encourages a sense of belonging
  • A moral obligation to live up to its demands
• Social facts include customs, norms, moral and legal rules, and religious beleifs
  • Consist of social constructions
  • Things human beings make, and they are real, but not real in an outside of human existence ways
• Once they are externalized, they act back on us
• We feel obligation even if no one is directly pressuring you, for example due to race or gender
• Collective conscience acts as a social fact
• The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms’ a determinate system with a life of its own
• We know it exists because we feel pressure from it
• Invisible order of collective conscience is present wherever norms can be felt
• We know a social norm exists because you feel resistance to its violation
  • We can see a lot about society based on collective responses to crime and norm violation
    • If we were self-interested, we wouldn't care about crime unless it directly impacted us
• When people react its because the collective conscience is violated
• Ceremonies of punishment as negative rituals
  • Death penalty, shunning etc
  • Enacting a form of punishment is needed to show that something has been violated to address a larger issue showing how something is held dear as a group
• All things of suicide go back to the integration and regulation
  • Functions that society serves
  • Acceptance into society as a whole
  • Feeling connected
  • Feeling like a part of
  • Strong social bonds provide more purpose
  • Well-integrated individuals are less likely to commit suicide

Regulation

• Being given a sense of expectations and being told what you are supposed to do
• Social norms and expectations govern behavior
• This isn't out of force becuase people respect society
• Too little or too much can lead to suicide
• Widespread failures of society means society will collapse
• Smaller scale failures lead to problems for individual
  • Leading to higher suicide rates
  • People who are less integrated and regulated are at a higher risk

Anomie

• This is a state of normlessness or breakdown of social norms
• Individuals feel disconnected from usual guidelines for behavior

Categories of suicide

• All come back to integration and regulation
  • Anomic + Egoistic - not enough integration/regulation
  • Fatalistic + altruistic - too much integration/regulation

Anomic

• Higher suicide because less regulation
• Lack of norms or values
  • Normlessness
  • No realistic goal or expectation is set, without a way to achieve desires
  • Associated with periods of social upheaval and economic crisis - Leads to a breakdown or disruption creating a state of normlessness
  • Always changing
  • People need to have expectations and limits and goals

Egoistic

• Limits on people's understanding about what is attainable
• Lack of direction or purpose
• Positions need to be rewarded and expect rewards
• Higher suicide because of less integration
• Individualistic
  • Not integrated enough into society
  • If you do not feel as connected to society, then you don't feel compelled to follow social norms
• People have social needs that can only be met in social circumstances
  • It is not a full human life outside of relationships and connections
• Lack the sense of belonging and support from social environment
• Married people
  • Weakened family ties may result in sense of isolation
• Religious groups
  • When individuals feel isolated or disconnected from values or beliefs of religious or cultural groups

Fatalistic

• Societies can over restrain and overregulate people
• Instead of setting expectations, societies limit and restrict them
• No hope or choice
• growing up in strict religious context, dictator, enslaves incarcerated populations

Altruistic

• people become so integrated into society, which becomes more important than the individual
  • Might give their life because of deep connection to group or society
  • Ex. martyrs, self-sacrifice, cults, military, social work - ways in which people sacrifice themselves for others/social world
  • Might make us lose sight of ourselves
  • See their lives as subsumed to a group
• Culturally determined
  • Cultures are more collective vs more individualistic

Sacred and Profane

• Division of these 2; all religions have in common
• Only make sense in relation to each other
• Things that threaten the sacred are profane
• Profane doesn't automatically mean bad
  • Could just be mundane or ordinary
  • A separation between union of one mand and one woman is still sacred
  • Palace the sacred thing in danger of being made ordinary, or special
    • You can wear pajamas at home or to the store, but don't wear them to a place of worship
• Devil is sacred, not profane
  • Not an intrinsic policy
  • construction
  • determine
  • protecting
  • taking on a life its own
    • becomes
    • collective
    • adhering
    • society
• Construction of things as sacred has to be veiled
• Not universal, and varies by religion
  • through a society of thoughts and
• Concept of naturalness and associating sacred with nature
• Involves a veiling mechanism
• Beyond our control
• Beyond social construction
• To give something ideological power in a certain way is also to mask that it is ideological
  • Something does not come from culture, society or god
  • Gives weight in legitimizing
• The connection between society and individuals relies on institutions (religion), serves the function of social solidatrity

Thinking about institutions and how people are connected society in forms oforganized society

Totems

• Spiritual group practice is focused on totems

  • but a
  • Organic and/or natural materials that represent their values
  • sacred

• Represents something is respect by groups a symbol also represents entire group/society

• Outward god in of shared society

• The emblem which one's identity is known the god, something create one's act.