Commodity Fetishism Essay

Commodities simple put are goods that are available for exchange or sale, but what truly gives these commodities values are the social relations that revolve around it. In the consumerist society that we live in today, a society that circles around capitalistic economical relations, commodities end up being more than just a thing to exchange. While it retains its physical assets, which grants it its value in our market, theorists such as Karl Marx, speculate that there is more to commodities than that. Commodities in capitalism are endorsed with social values that are arranged from other spheres, such as racial thinking, gender norms, and social hierarchies just to mention a few. So in other words, what grants the commodity its value are these

A term Marx used to describe “the ways in which commodities have a phantom objectivity” . It is in other words the manner of penning commodities with social qualities. In the marketplace, consumers and producers view one another by means of the goods and money that they exchange. Marx argues that what led to commodity fetishism was ultimately, capitalism . What happens then is that the social relations that are interlaced in the production of said commodities are made to disappear. In that way, the social relations that together links us to other people across space and time as well as the social relations involved in making commodities significant are replaced by how we come to see ourselves relative to commodities. We act then primarily as consumers of commodities. These commodities then become a form of fetishes, which are available for and become participants in projects of the self. An example of this is when we have markers on food, for instance: exotic food; this highlights difference and identity in consumption practices. Knowing about food marks, or buying certain marks makes the consumer current, fashionable and hip. This also applies for people that partake in alternative ways of consumption by choosing, for example, organic food and/or fair trade products. These marks, these meanings become then participants in the project of the self, linking individual’s bodies with global networks of power through