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Comparing Marx's Views On Fetishism And Commodity

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The main point Marx’s text dealt with was that in the current world order, things (commodities) seem to have intrinsic values. He points out that things attain these values regardless of how and with what process of labour they were produced. This intrinsic value characteristic has no physical basis and appears as magical. Therefore the ‘fetishism’ allegory that Marx adopts I think fits well into the situation, used in order to describe the mystical properties of commodities. Nothing that is worth money, or money (gold) itself, has an exchange-value stemming from their inherent characteristics, so he puts forward that this value seems to be generated by the social relations of people and calls the notion the fetishism of commodities. All the while, the social processes or human labour that went into the commodity production is forgotten. Commodity fetishism seems to be essential for the market system to work the way it does; if the value of a commodity is determined solely by its use-value then labourer is not alienated from its labour, therefore the capitalist and the merchant cannot profit by selling things for higher amounts than what went into its production (what was paid for its alienated labourer). Then, this illusion is not generated because things seemingly have …show more content…

After explaining that “in order to exist, every social formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and in order to be able to produce”, he redefines Marx’s concept of the “state apparatus” and puts a distinction between what he defines as ideological and repressive state apparatuses, offering them as a way of ensuring the aforementioned process. He later deals with two key questions to explain this: how does ideology function, how does the society and the individual become subjected to

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