...“The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret” Response” While I was reading this section in Marx’s “Capital Volume One” I really didn’t understand what far out, groundbreaking point Marx was trying to make. He kept going on and on for way too long on different points he could make very clearly in a sentence or two. Overall, the point that Marx was trying to get at was how the value of a commodity and the magnitude of labor to create a final product affected its worth. Obviously the more valuable a commodity, the more valuable what you make out of it will be. I don’t quite understand how Marx can say this was discovered by a “scientific study” since it is rather simple, but either way he’s correct about how an item made of a more valuable commodity makes it a more valuable product. Anybody looking to turn a resource into a new product in search of making a profit understands this very well. Nobody in their right mind is going to take an expensive resource like gold, mold it into some type of jewelry, and charge less for it than what the raw gold is worth. Scarcity is what drives the price of gold to be so high at $1,725/oz. right now. Since gold is a hard resource to find it makes it more valuable. On the other hand, a resource like wood isn’t going to be an expensive resource since it’s so readily available and common. Wood comes from trees which are found almost everywhere in the world. Being that it’s so easy to obtain, if I make some sort of product out of wood such...
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... Do the apostolics fetishize honey? people invest significantly in certain kinds of understanding in the material properties of objects. pebbles and water are mundane therefore easier to slip in to the fetish. For them nothing less interesting than a pebble, they make this a clear point. honey endowed with healing properties, but when he eats it different semiotic ideas. The guy in the car treated honey as pure presence, but ocontaining the spirit- he comes really close to fetishizing. As long as you know that it is wrong you are not fetishing. fetish is an unsettling presence, innate inalienable power to it. Overestimation of value, not able to draw the line. Pure vision of the power of the object that Is fetishized. Is fetishism an inevitable part of social practice? Semiotic ideology: what does this term mean? How is it useful for an understanding of the religious approach to things? Semiotic forms-“social categories” which are “recognizable as something knowable”. “They must, that is, have some material manifestation that makes them available to, interpretable by, and, in most cases, replicable by other people: bodily actions, speech, the treatment of objects, and so forth.” “Semiotic forms are public entities…” they are “objects for the senses…” and “as such, they have distinctive temporal dimensions…” however, “Because they are repeatable, they have the potential to persist over time and across social contexts.” “the kinds of things that things are...
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...Commodity Fetishism vs. Capital Fetishism Marxist Interpretations vis-à-vis Marx’s analyses in Capital Dimitri Dimoulis and John Milios Abstract In Marx’s analysis of the Capitalist Mode of Production and more precisely in his theory of value, the key to decipher the capitalist political and ideological practices and structures is to be found. In this context, many Marxists believed that the analysis of “commodity fetishism” in Section 1 of Volume 1 of Capital renders the basis for understanding ideological domination and political coercion under the capitalist rule. The authors argue, that “commodity fetishism” is only a preliminary notion, which allows Marx to arrive, in subsequent Sections of Capital, at the concept of the “fetishism of capital”. 1. Introduction From the days of his youth Marx was familiar with the statements of ethnographers on the subject of fetishism and used the term in his own writings.1 Equally important was in this context the influence of Hegel.2 In this paper we are not going to deal with the different meanings that the notion of fetishism acquires at different points of Marx’s work, an issue which is related to the various concepts of fetishism in political economy, political philosophy and the social sciences.3 We will focus on the analysis of commodity fetishism, in an effort to contribute to the comprehension of the different dimensions of this concept, especially in Marx’s Capital. For this purpose, we will pursue the following course:...
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...Social Theory Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, is credited with establishing and developing the idea of a communist society in response to modern capitalism in the early 1800's. Communism is the theoretical economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all its members. Marx described human history as the attempt to control nature in order to improve the human condition. The party was formed to support and promote the common interests of the proletariat. The labor market is penetrated thorough the means of social capitalism that is endorsed from the buying and selling power of companies that promote the circular flow of products in the buying market of financial capital distributed and dispersed through financial capital gains of the economy buying and selling products that commodities of social Marxism. The Marx’s view of capitalism, and the idea of commodity fethisms is the ideal perception of social relationships involved in production, and not talking about the relationships among people but the economic concept of commodities exchanged in the marketplace. The economic value of products that are commodities in the social market are circulated as forms of capital merchants who are competing for financial capital gains, and mediated forms of monetary exchange that is contributed to the GDP, and the commodity exchange value. The exchanged value for the commodities are valued as capital...
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...Alienation Alienation is the process whereby people become foreign to the world they are living in. more The concept of alienation is deeply embedded in all the great religions and social and political theories of the civilised epoch, namely, the idea that some time in the past people lived in harmony, and then there was some kind of rupture which left people feeling like foreigners in the world, but some time in the future this alienation would be overcome and humanity would again live in harmony with itself and Nature. Marx had a specific understanding of the very sharp experience of alienation which is found in modern bourgeois society. Marx developed this understanding through his critique of Hegel. According to Hegel, through their activity, people created a culture which then confronted them as an alien force. But for Hegel human activity was itself but the expression of the Spirit (or Zeitgeist) which acted through people. In the first place, Marx insisted that it was human labour which created culture and history, not the other way around; in other words spirit was a human product, not the other way around. “Subjectivity is a characteristic of subjects and personality a characteristic of the person. Instead of considering them to be predicates of their subjects, Hegel makes the predicates independent and then lets them be subsequently and mysteriously...
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...the rest of the train by playing their part. In this case, the workers are being alienated from their own humanity because they have become a part of the system of production in which they are treated only as instruments rather than as actual human beings. Commodity Fetishism can also be seen throughout the movie. As described by Marx, commodity fetishism is “the way that material goods produced under capitalism take on an almost religious or magical aura; their use-value often transcended by their exchange-value” (Benshoff p.24) There are several examples of this in the movie as we see the inhabitants of the train often exchanging drugs and food as if they were money. They use these normally valueless items to make trade because it’s essentially all they have of any value in the society they are forced to live in. In conclusion, I will argue that the concepts and ideologies used and portrayed in the movie Snowpiercer are the same concepts described by Karl Marx in the chapters we read about in class. The major concepts of the movie match perfectly to Marx’s theories of economic determinism, alienation, and commodity fetishism, ultimately turning this movie into a strong message about social inequality. I think if Karl Marx were to watch this movie today, he would be mortified. I mean, this is the kind of stuff he probably had nightmares about. But in the end, I think this movie did a good job portraying these concepts. Confusing as the movie was in general, the concepts were...
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...hyper-consumption, is based on commodities. The role of the commodity in the labor force has been thoroughly discussed throughout various eras, and in recent years, the general account of the commodity itself has had to adapt to the constantly changing and developing digital media industry and digital economy. Karl Marx wrote in The Fetishism of the Commodity that commodities are seen as objects with intrinsic value and cloud the labor-exploiting mechanisms that produced them. Tiziana Terranova, a more current thinker, draws on early Marxist thought in Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy, but also accounts for the changes the digital media industry produced on the labor force, the very concept of a commodity, and capitalism as a whole. Marx is the first to state that capitalism is based on the accumulation and hyper-consumption of commodities. As such, commodities are meaningful both because of their monetary/exchange value and because they reflect the social relations of production that went into making them. In The Fetishism of the Commodity, Marx says that the inherent problem with the capitalist structure is that society tends to focus only on the monetary and exchange value of the commodity. Marx uses the word “fetish” to describe commodities and show how they cause society to fixate on their monetary and exchange values, while ignoring the exploitative nature of the market that produced them. To illustrate his point, Marx uses the example of wood used...
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...consciousness that attempts to explain simply what people say, imagine and/or conceive in their minds. It encompasses politics, morality, religion, metaphysics and law among others. In the process of simplification of the complex reality, ideologies always reflect a bias and serve the interests of a particular against another. The ideas that rule, which we may simply call, ‘ruling ideas’ are of a given group of people, the ruling class which represent the dominant material relationships. According to Marx, the goal of an ideology is to legitimize the forces of the ruling class to remain in the dominant position (hegemony).This way it obscures the understanding of the disempowered group into not understanding whatever is going on. This obfuscation results to logical contradictions in the dominant ideology, and Marxism tries to open up by returning to the materialistic conditions of a society which is commonly known as mode of production of the society. In the book, German Ideology, Marx and Engels lead us into understanding that it is possible address the real conditions in which humans exist outside the ideological bewilderment. Marxism tries to convince us that if the disempowered people (Bourgeoisie) come the understanding of the ideological mystification used by the ruling class (Proletariat). The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity...
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...It became the thought among many Christian philosophers that the act of labor is synonymous to the act of glorifying God. Thus, Weber postulates what he defines a “calling,” - a specific activity that a person is thought good do in the name of glorification of God, which ultimately summarizes the essential purpose of each actor in the social. The various 'callings' ascribed to the populace spawned the capitalist division of labor. Although justifying material acquisition, the Protestant Ethic maintained an opinion of thoughtful disvaluement of possessions. That is, while truness to thy 'calling' and thankfulness for thy riches is sought, he must never be distracted from glorifying God, and remembering his purpose. True to Marx’s commodity...
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...Marx and Engels had a straightforward view on social structure. Especially so when looking at capitalist societies. They proclaim that a society consists of two major groups. The Bourgeoisie and the Proletariats. The Bourgeoisie were the economically superior in comparison to the Proletariat and maintained the entirety of a society’s power. The Proletariat were the working poor who had to bend a knee to the Bourgeoisie in order to try and reap the benefits of their labors. What I mean by that can be explained better in Karl Marx’s work, Alienated Labor, where he describes quite well on pages 5-6 that a worker has no true connection to anything that he does within the capitalist environment. Though the worker produces the commodities that help...
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...Facebook and Identity Construction Khadija Ali Introduction Background of Facebook Identity Construction Identity Construction through Facebook The birth of the internet has changed the traditional conditions of identity construction. As the corporeal body is separated from social encounters in the online environment, it becomes possible for people to interact with one another through the Internet in text mode alone that has nothing to do or does not reveal anything about their physical attributes. Furthermore, even in situations where the audiovisual mode is used in contacts via the Internet, anonymity can be maintained through withholding information regarding the personal background, like the name, residence and institutional affiliation of a person. The combination of disembodiment and anonymity result to a technologically-mediated environment where a new mode of identity construction emerges (Tennyson, 2008). The model of identity represented in social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster and MySpace was criticized by Alice Marwick. Marwick argues that the finite profile options in this social networking sites are greatly too limiting than with the diverse open-ended ways that people express themselves in face-to-face contact. According to Marwick, “the rigid profile structure encourages the user to present him or herself in a way that is partly constructed by the application, not the user”. She emphasized that the type of identity performance...
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...1. INTRODUCTION i. What is theory (unit theory)? What is meta-theory (orienting strategy)? What is the relationship between theory and meta-theory? A theory is a logical explanation of how a given empirical phenomenon works. A set of concepts and a set of logical theoretical statements that link those concepts to each other, in order to explain a specific sociological phenomenon. Orienting theories entail what and how to study. (i.e. symbolic interactionism) They provide assumptions and central questions to be studied; conceptual schemes; guidelines to study raised questions A meta-theory is Two orienting strategies are order and actions. ------------------------------------------------- ii. What are the basic elements of theory? (Understand them and be able to explain their role in a theory) iii. What is causality? What are the main conditions for establishing a causal relationship? Causality: an invariable, temporal, and asymmetrical relationship between phenomena in which the existence of one phenomenon in a given for inevitably leads to the existence of a second phenomenon. 1. Covariation: both phenomena vary together (i.e education and income) 2. Nonspuriousness: the relationship between 2 phenomena cannot be explained by the third (ie ice cream and drownings, number of doctors and number of deaths in an area) 3. ------------------------------------------------- Time order: cause happens before the effect. Not always as obvious as it appears...
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...Adrienne Korson Marxism: For and Against Marxism is essentially a critique of Capitalism. In order to understand Marxism, one needs to evaluate the history of Marxism. Heilbroner described Marxism as being “inescapable” (Heilbroner, 15). Marxism is credited with the contribution for uncovering an unsuspected level of reality beneath the surface of capitalism. His mode of inquiry for uncovering the hidden reality of capitalism is through his own invented process of socioanalysis. Because of Marx’s legacy of revealing the reality of capitalism, Heilbroner compares him to Freud and Plato, all whose works are inescapable for the truths they have unveiled. Freud and Plato both unveiled hidden realities. Marx shared a further similarity in the sense that his “combination of insight and method permanently altered the manner in which reality would thereafter be perceived” (Heilbroner, 17). Marx’s works in his book Capital is still more relevant today than Adam Smith’s renowned work Wealth of Nations. Marx‘s book placed importance on technology and crises and social tension, and more importantly, undertakes the task of critiquing the political economy. However, the problem of Marxism is within trying to define it. Heilbroner believes that there exists a set of premises that can assist in defining Marxist thought, “so that any analysis that contains these premises can be properly classified as Marxist” (Heilbroner, 20). There are four main premises as described by Heilbroner; the...
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...Sociology 100 – Key theorists Bauman, Zygmunt (1925– ) A Polish-born sociologist who was expelled by the Communist government of Poland and dismissed from Warsaw University. He left Poland in 1968, working in Israel (and briefly in Australia) and then in Britain, at Leeds University. Bauman is a prolific and highly influential writer whose work extends beyond academic sociology. His study of contemporary ‘liquid’ society and postmodernity, and the ethical and moral consequences of living in such a society, have made him one of the most influential social theorists of modern times. Liquid society – postmodernity, ethics and moral consequences. Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002) A French sociologist and anthropologist whose work attempted to deal with how people contribute to their own domination. Developing the concepts of ‘habitus’, ‘cultural capital’, and ‘field’, Bourdieu examined processes of subordination and resistance in a number of areas of social life, including education, art, literature, language, television, and the globalised economy. Bourdieu’s most famous book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984). Globalised economy, subordination and resistance in social life. ‘Culture capital’ Burke, Edmund (1729–97) An English politician and writer, often seen as the father of modern conservatism for his hostile reaction to the chaos and violence of the French Revolution. For many, his defence of tradition and individual liberty is...
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...the complexities that come from within. Lefebvre covers a lot of ground within this book, and a lot of deep theories are strewn across the pages. However, he has one clear theme that lingers throughout. This theme deals with the fact that all spaces are produced in one way or another; they do not simply exist, they were achieved. One of the main highlights he touches on frequently is the divide between natural space and social space, and clearly shows the differences. Along with this, Lefebvre writes about many other intrinsic areas of space and how it is produced. Some of these complex areas include how spaces are read and experienced, how spaces are represented and misrepresented and he often touches on the viewpoints of others, such as Marx, to show the similarities or dissimilarities in their theories. However, when reading The Production of Space, it is clear that Lefebvre aims to highlight some very interesting central points: 1. Humans produce their own world, and therefore produce space 2. Space is...
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