Question:

How should we understand the fetishistic character of commodities?

Answer:

1 In commodity exchange, relations between people are concealed by relations between things. These human relations hidden beneath relations between things are relatively easy to discern in the simple commodity form, but become increasingly difficult to detect as the commodity form develops.

In fact, "commodity fetishism" could also be translated as "the worship of the thing called a commodity." The name is unimportant. What matters is that, in commodity exchange, relations of production between people appear as relations of exchange between things.

The mystery of the commodity form therefore consists simply in this: it reflects the social character of people's own labor back to them as an objective characteristic of the products of labor themselves, as the natural social properties of these things. It thereby reflects the producers' social relation to total labor as a social relation between objects existing outside the producers. Through this transformation, the products of labor become commodities, things that are both perceptible and beyond perception, or social things. (89)

To find an analogy, therefore, we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, entering into relations with one another and with people. In the world of commodities, the products of human hands do the same. I call this fetishism. The products of labor acquire this fetishistic character as soon as they are produced as commodities, and fetishism is therefore inseparable from commodity production. (90)

What practically concerns those who exchange products is first of all how much of other people's products they can obtain for their own—that is, the proportions in which products exchange. When habit gradually gives these proportions a certain stability, they seem to arise from the nature of the products of labor themselves. (92)

2 The key to seeing relations between people in commodity exchange is to understand that the magnitude of value is determined by labor-time.

In fact, the character of the products of labor as values becomes established only when they appear as magnitudes of value. These magnitudes vary continually, independently of the exchangers' will, foresight, and actions. To the exchangers, their own social movement takes the form of a movement of things. Instead of controlling this movement, they are controlled by it. Only fully developed commodity production allows scientific understanding to arise from experience itself: private labors, performed independently yet comprehensively dependent upon one another as parts of a spontaneously developed social division of labor, are continually reduced to their socially proportionate measure. This occurs because, amid the accidental and constantly changing exchange ratios of their products, the socially necessary labor-time required to produce them forcibly asserts itself as a regulating law of nature, just as the law of gravity forcibly asserts itself when a house falls about someone's ears.

(Continued) Thus the determination of the magnitude of value by labor-time is a secret hidden behind the apparent movements of commodities' relative values. Discovering this secret removes the appearance that the magnitude of value of the products of labor is determined purely by chance, but by no means abolishes the objective form through which that determination takes place. (92–93)

3 Seeing capitalist society, or even commodity-producing society, as one stage in the development of human society rather than its final form helps us recognize the human relations concealed behind relations between things. In other social formations, relations between people are direct. Only in a society that produces commodities do relations between people appear as relations between commodities.

These forms are precisely what constitute the categories of bourgeois economics. For the relations of production of this historically determined mode of social production—commodity production—these categories are socially valid, and therefore objective, forms of thought. As soon as we move to other forms of production, all the mystery of the commodity world, all the magic and sorcery surrounding the products of labor on the basis of commodity production, immediately vanish. (93) (In the following text, Marx analyzes in turn Robinson Crusoe's form of production, medieval production, peasant production with the family as the unit of production and consumption, and the imagined production of an "association of free individuals." In all these forms, relations between people are simple and clear.)

4 In modern society, some commodities without value also formally have prices, such as conscience and antiques. This strengthens commodity fetishism.

It must be pointed out that the price form can give rise not only to a quantitative discrepancy between the magnitude of value and price—that is, between the magnitude of value and its own monetary expression—but can also conceal a qualitative contradiction, so that although money is merely the value form of commodities, a price may entirely cease to express value.

(Continued) Some things are not themselves commodities, such as conscience, honor, and so forth, yet their owners can sell them for money, and through their prices they acquire the commodity form. Thus something without value may formally have a price. On the other hand, the prices of things such as antiques, which cannot be reproduced by labor and therefore have no value in themselves, are determined by highly fortuitous circumstances. The only conditions for selling a thing are that it can be monopolized and alienated. These imaginary price forms conceal real value relations or relations derived from them, and become "arguments" with which believers in Western economics attack the labor theory of value, as though Marx had never examined such questions. (Yu Bin, Understanding Capital in Forty-Five Ten-Minute Lessons, 29–30)

The price of things that have no value at all—that is, are not products of labor, such as land—or at least cannot be reproduced by labor, such as antiques, works of art by particular masters, and so forth, may be determined by a combination of highly fortuitous circumstances. The only conditions for selling a thing are that it can be monopolized and alienated. (Capital, Volume III, p. 714)

5 In modern society, commodity fetishism has developed very fully alongside the commodity economy. There is not only commodity fetishism but also money fetishism, capital fetishism, interest fetishism, rent fetishism, and so forth.

Under capitalism, the commodity economy reaches its highest point, and commodity fetishism correspondingly develops to its fullest extent. Here all products of labor are transformed into commodities (quoter's note: this statement seems inaccurate), all social connections between producers must be realized through value relations, the law of value broadly governs production and circulation, and people submit entirely to the rule of the market's spontaneous forces. In capitalist society there is not only commodity fetishism but also money fetishism, capital fetishism, interest fetishism, rent fetishism, and so forth. In short, all human relations of production are concealed here behind the appearance of things. (Xu He, An Introduction to Political Economy, pp. 57–58)

6 Fetishistic ideas find concentrated expression in Western economics.

Just as people's views of many objective phenomena often ultimately find concentrated expression in a particular theoretical form, under capitalism their fetishistic ideas about commodities, money, capital, and so forth find concentrated expression in bourgeois political economy. Bourgeois economic writings are full of all manner of fetishistic ideas.

(Continued) For example, concerning commodities, some say: "Value (exchange-value) is a property of things; wealth (use-value) is a property of human beings." Because they regard value as a natural property of objects, they also strive to demonstrate the role of natural material in creating value. Their fetishistic ideas are even more pronounced concerning money: they believe that gold and silver are money by nature and naturally possess the ability to exchange directly for every commodity. Bourgeois scholars also habitually regard all means of production as capital, interest as the product of money itself, and rent as the product of land, and so on. In this way, social relations of production between people disappear from view, and the bourgeoisie's exploitation of the proletariat is concealed. Naturally, this greatly benefits the bourgeoisie's exploitation and rule of the proletariat. (Xu He, An Introduction to Political Economy, p. 58)

7 The "invisible hand" of Western economics is simply one manifestation of commodity fetishism.

Indeed, he generally neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he promotes it. In preferring to support domestic rather than foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and in directing that industry so that its produce may have the greatest value, he intends only his own gain. In this, as in many other cases, he is led by an invisible hand to promote an end that was no part of his intention. Nor is it always worse for society that it was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes society's interest more effectively than when he truly intends to do so. (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, translated by Guo Dali and Wang Yanan, Beijing: Commercial Press, 2015, p. 428)

The producers' private labor truly acquires a twofold social character. On the one hand, as a particular kind of useful labor, it must satisfy a particular social need and thus establish itself as part of total labor, part of the spontaneously formed system of the social division of labor. On the other hand, it can satisfy the producer's own manifold needs only insofar as every particular kind of useful private labor is exchangeable for, and therefore equal to, every other kind of useful private labor. (90–91)

This is the reasoning that Western economics' most sacred article of faith—the principle of the "invisible hand"—tries but fails to explain clearly. (Yu Bin, Understanding Capital in Forty-Five Ten-Minute Lessons, 19)

8 Commodity fetishism is an important reason for the flourishing of religion today. For a detailed discussion, see pages 18–21 of Yu Bin's Understanding Capital in Forty-Five Ten-Minute Lessons. Below are several of its most incisive passages.

Just as people in religion are dominated by the products of their own brains, in the commodity economy they are also "dominated by the products of their own hands." In a world of commercial competition, success or failure often depends not on an individual's actions or talents but on circumstances beyond their control. A particular labor operation that yesterday was one of many functions performed by the same commodity producer may today separate from that connection and become independent, sending its partial product to market as an independent commodity—for example, today's outsourcing of production and services. Conditions for this separation may or may not yet be mature. A product that satisfies a social need today may tomorrow be displaced, wholly or partly, by a similar product.

(Continued) Even if a kind of labor, such as weaving linen, is an established part of the social division of labor, this by no means guarantees the use-value of a given quantity of linen produced—that is, it does not guarantee that all this linen will find someone who needs it. Society's need for linen, like its need for everything else, has limits. If competitors have already satisfied that need, this weaver's product is redundant, surplus, and therefore useless. Even if his products are not surplus, the magnitude of value at which they exchange—that is, the socially necessary labor-time required to produce them—may have changed. The same amount of labor-time that yesterday was indeed socially necessary to produce a given quantity of linen may no longer be so today. Such a change occurs behind the weaver's back, without his permission and without needing it.

(Continued) He will discover that the division of labor makes him and others independent private producers while also placing the social process of production, and their relations within it, beyond their own control. On one side is mutual independence between people; on the other is comprehensive dependence between things. What decides the outcome is not a person's will or action, but the manipulation of the "invisible hand" championed by Western economics—that unknown, supreme economic force: people propose, but God disposes (that is, the alien power of the capitalist mode of production). Yet since this almighty god championed by Western economics can neither prevent capitalist economic crises nor spare capitalists losses, debt, and bankruptcy, nor spare workers unemployment and poverty, the gods of religion, or God, make their entrance. (Yu Bin, Understanding Capital in Forty-Five Ten-Minute Lessons, 19–20)

All religion is merely the illusory reflection in people's minds of the external forces that dominate their daily lives, a reflection in which earthly forces take the form of supernatural powers. In the globalized market economy, people are dominated, as though by an alien power, by the economic relations they themselves create and the means of production they themselves produce. Naturally, as this factual basis reflected in religion continues to exist and develop, religion itself exists and develops along with it. This is the fundamental reason why, as the market economy has deepened in recent years, more people in China have become religious, especially entrepreneurs. (Yu Bin, Understanding Capital in Forty-Five Ten-Minute Lessons, 20)

Therefore, eliminating religion requires eliminating its factual basis and the domination of people by various alien powers. This becomes possible only when the relations of practical everyday life appear before people as perfectly clear and rational relations between people and between humanity and nature.

(Continued) Only when the form of the process of social life—that is, material production—as the product of freely associated people comes under their conscious and planned control; only when society, by possessing and systematically using all means of production, frees itself and all its members from enslavement; only when people both propose and dispose, will the last alien power reflected in religion disappear, and with it the religious reflection of the real world itself. In other words, religion can be eliminated completely only on the basis of the material conditions of existence and social relations of communist society. This is also the fundamental reason that we emphasize freedom of religious belief today. (Yu Bin, Understanding Capital in Forty-Five Ten-Minute Lessons, 20–21