Commodity Fetishism In The Auto Industry

Social class can be reflected by consumer goods in many ways. Luxury cars for example

are material things that could reflect a person’s ability to afford more expensive things. There are

low end and high end vehicles and some in between. Many of us might think of a person driving

an expensive car as having more money and power without thinking that maybe it’s a rental car,

or a wealthy person might like simpler things. In our society we tend to see the taste of people

who are more wealthy as being more valuable, through this elites gain more cultural power

which Bourdieu explains in “The Forms of Capital” that it can also be transmitted to social and

economic capital; they are convertible. If you have one, potentially you can have the others.

Even though the worker has

worked on the car he has been alienated from his work by the company not allowing the worker

to keep some of the profit for himself and instead keeping it for the company.

Marx described Fetishism of Commodities in “Capital” as objects that satisfy human

needs and wants. One example of commodity fetishism in the auto industry is the reduction in

level of skill required for the job. A worker who is highly skilled and who can start and end a

project will be replaced by several not so skilled workers who each will be assigned a small

aspect in an assembly line. As a result the company increases its production and the workers get paid less. The car becomes a commodity for the worker because he is not making the car for his

own use being alienated from the result. The other part of this commodity is our disconnection

from the workers and how we see this commodities. Paying for the item, not the actual labor.

Low end cars and high end cars differ less in the amount of labor to produce than the price

reflects.

Cultural capital in the Objectified state is what Bourdieu will describe as physical