Fetishism: A Preliminary Exegesis

Desmond McNeill ()
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Desmond McNeill: University of Oslo

Chapter 4 in Fetishism and the Theory of Value, 2021, pp 39-55 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract I present a preliminary exegesis of the concept of fetishism, based on the famous quotation from Chapter 1 of the first volume of Capital: “There (with commodities) it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic from of a relation between things”. I discuss what other writers have made of this, before analysing each component of the statement in turn: ‘a relation’; ‘a social relation between men’; ‘relation between things’; and ‘assumes the fantastic form of …’. This raises a number of issues: most notably Marx’s emphasis on the social as opposed to the material, or natural; and his rather equivocal phrasing: ‘assumes the fantastic form’. This appears to leave open the question of whether the capitalist system somehow ‘produces’ this form, and whether it is ‘real’ or a self-serving and deliberate mystification.

Keywords: Marx; Commodity fetishism; Capital; Social relation; Mystification; Lukacs; Sweezy; Dobb; Rosdolsky; Colletti; Rubin; Cohen (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:pshchp:978-3-030-56123-9_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-56123-9_4

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