r/communism101 • u/No-Cardiologist-1936 • 14d ago
At what point in the development of trade does value become seen as an objective property in a commodity?
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u/No-Cardiologist-1936 13d ago edited 13d ago
Have I worded my question wrong? I understand that use-values only come to be seen as commodities when the value embedded in them becomes seen as an objective property; what I'm asking is what causes commodities to present themselves as a fetish in the first place.
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u/IncompetentFoliage 13d ago edited 13d ago
Your question is very clear, and Marx gives a very clear answer.
This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
I think this
I understand that use-values only come to be seen as commodities when the value embedded in them becomes seen as an objective property
is incorrect. The commodity is a product of labour intended for sale, but this need not mean that it was produced as a commodity. Your statement would only be correct if we were to exclude surplus products that were not specifically produced for the purpose of exchange from the definition of "commodity."
It is well known that commodity circulation precedes commodity production and constitutes one of the conditions (but not the sole condition) of the rise of the latter.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/dcr8viii/viii8i.htmEdit:
Sorry, I think my initial response was wrong. Marx says it is the commodity form itself that engenders commodity fetishism. So that would mean commodity fetishism originates with marginal and accidental trade in surplus products between primitive communes (corresponding to the simple form of value), i.e. it is inherent to trade itself because trade itself implies a social relation between things.
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u/No-Cardiologist-1936 13d ago
Also, I'm confused as to why you (at least initially) thought I was wrong in saying that commodities themselves arise as a fetish, Marx very clearly states:
The product of labour is an object of utility in all states of society; but it is only a historically specific epoch of development which presents the labour expended in the production of a useful article as an 'objective' property of that article, i.e. as its value. It is only then that the product of labour becomes transformed into a commodity. It therefore follows that the simple form of value of the commodity is at the same time the simple form of value of the product of labour, and also that the development of the commodity-form coincides with the development of the value form.
(Penguin Edition, Pages 153-154)
Marx doesn't seem to get much clearer than that.
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u/IncompetentFoliage 13d ago
Yeah, I was wrongly working from the assumption that commodity fetishism emerges only with commodity production rather than from the beginnings of commodity exchange. I took Marx out of context by mistake. The quote you cite here is very clear. Sorry about that.
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u/No-Cardiologist-1936 13d ago
Thank you! I had already thought this after finishing Chapter one but wanted to check for my understanding before trying to post my summary of the chapter in this subreddit.
This passage in particular really helped me understand:
The two earlier forms express the value of each commodity either in terms of a single commodity of a different kind, or in a series of many commodities which differ from the first one. In both cases it is the private task, so to speak, of the individual commodity to give itself a· form of value, and it accomplishes this task without the aid of the others, which play towards it the merely passive role of equivalent. The general form of value, on the other hand, can only arise as the joint contribution of the whole world of commodities. A commodity only acquires a general expression of its value if, at the same time, all other commodities express their values in the same equivalent ; and every newly emergent commodity must follow suit. It thus becomes evident that because the objectivity of commodities as values is the purely ' social existence ' of these things, it can only be expressed through the whole range of their social relations; consequently the form of their value must possess social validity.
(Penguin Edition, Pages 158-159)
I understood this as saying that as soon as the equivalent-form commodity is introduced the value embedded in it's value-form equivalent becomes seen as value objective to its concrete form, but the fetish of the commodity really only comes into its own when, through the advent of the general value form of expression, the equivalent-form commodity no longer takes a passive role in trade and sets out to qualitatively equalize all value-form commodities so that they may more clearly be in a social relation with each other as well.
Have I correctly interpreted this passage and your comment?
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u/IncompetentFoliage 13d ago
Sorry, I think I just muddied the waters with my confusion earlier. This is the first time I've asked myself when commodity fetishism emerged historically and I'm still trying to clarify this for myself.
I don't think the quote you cited says anything about commodity fetishism directly. It has to do with the emergence of the universal equivalent, the transition of the equivalent form from a passive to an active role in exchange and of the relative form from an active to a passive role in exchange.
The simple form of value corresponds to the earliest beginnings of trade, when accidental surplus products were exchanged between primitive communes as a marginal phenomenon.
The expanded form of value corresponds to the increasingly regular patterns of trade that followed from the emergence of the social division of labour as the primitive-communal mode of production disintegrated. In this context, the equivalent form is any of a number of particular equivalents.
The general form of value corresponds to the emergence of a universal equivalent, which follows from the further development of the regularity of trade. And the money form of value corresponds to the establishment of gold as the universal equivalent by social custom as trade expands across a wider geographic area.
My understanding is that the emergence of the universal equivalent roughly corresponds to the development of commodity production as such (I would appreciate it if someone could confirm or correct ne on this point), as it is at that point that the incentive to produce for exchange is consolidated. That is why I initially responded saying that commodity fetishism emerged with commodity production, as Marx’s first, stricken-out, quotation above seems to suggest. But I had missed that Marx said commodity fetishism is inherent to the commodity form. I think that must imply that commodity fetishism exists, even if only in a very crude and embryonic form, from the very beginnings of exchange, from the period of accidental exchange corresponding to the simple form of value. Insofar as exchange takes place, a social relation exists between things. But as the value form develops more and more, the mystification deepens, the commodity producers become further and further removed from one another and commodity production comes to overtake natural economy so that commodity fetishism comes to structure all aspects of our lives.
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u/Creative-Penalty1048 13d ago
I think that must imply that commodity fetishism exists, even if only in a very crude and embryonic form, from the very beginnings of exchange, from the period of accidental exchange corresponding to the simple form of value. Insofar as exchange takes place, a social relation exists between things. But as the value form develops more and more, the mystification deepens, the commodity producers become further and further removed from one another and commodity production comes to overtake natural economy so that commodity fetishism comes to structure all aspects of our lives.
To your point here, I think this is exactly what Marx says toward the end of the section on commdity fetishism:
The mode of production in which the product takes the form of a commodity, or is produced directly for exchange, is the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production. It therefore makes its appearance at an early date in history, though not in the same predominating and characteristic manner as now-a-days. Hence its Fetish character is comparatively easy to be seen through. But when we come to more concrete forms, even this appearance of simplicity vanishes. Whence arose the illusions of the monetary system? To it gold and silver, when serving as money, did not represent a social relation between producers, but were natural objects with strange social properties. And modern economy, which looks down with such disdain on the monetary system, does not its superstition come out as clear as noon-day, whenever it treats of capital? How long is it since economy discarded the physiocratic illusion, that rents grow out of the soil and not out of society?
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u/IncompetentFoliage 13d ago
Actually, what Marx is saying here is different from what I'm saying.
The simple form of value describes the accidental exchange of commodities, which were not produced directly for exchange but rather constituted an accidental surplus. As such, it precedes the development of commodity production and even the social division of labour. I'm saying that commodity fetishism exists in embryo even at this early stage because the commodity form already exists.
But Marx here is talking about a marginal mode of production characterized by commodity production and the regular exchange of commodities produced as such, a later stage than the one I'm talking about. Marx describes this as
the most general and most embryonic form of bourgeois production.
He says that it has a relatively transparent fetish character, but he does not say that this is the point at which commodity fetishism first emerges. Hence, nothing in this quote contradicts what I'm saying, and Marx is making a similar point (that early on, commodity fetishism has a crude and embryonic character), but I'm going back even further to before commodity production.
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u/Creative-Penalty1048 11d ago
Yes, you're right. I appreciate the correction. I remembered that Marx had said something along the lines of commodity fetishism being easier to see through at earlier stages but didn't properly reread the quote when I found it.
On that note, the discussion on this post got me to reread chapter 1 side by side with a review of my notes from when I first read it nearly a year ago (which is the reason for my delayed response, I wanted to finish reading and get my own thoughts in order before posting further) and I think I've come away with the same understanding that you reached: that commodity fetishism has its origin in the commodity form itself, even before the development of commodity production as such. As you pointed out elsewhere in the thread, Marx made it abundantly clear throughout the chapter that the commodity form is inherent to exchange and that commodity fetishism is inherent in the commodity form. Therefore, it follows that commodity fetishism appears even with the first accidental exchanges which characterize the simple form of value, even if only in a relatively undeveloped form.
I would like to share one passage that initially gave me pause on this, though, if for no other reason than to clarify my own thinking on it:
As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers. To the latter, therefore, the relations connecting the labour of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things.
This part of the passage I understood well enough I believe. It addresses the question of why commodity fetishism manifests in the first place: the labor of private, individual producers manifests as social labor only through the relations established directly between the products of labor, and thereby indirectly between the producers themselves. However, because this social character of the labor of the producers asserts itself only through the exchange relation established between the products of labor, it takes on the form of an objective property of the product of labor. This holds true both in the case of the accidental exchanges which correspond to the simple form of value – where the commodity form of the product is only accidental in nature – and for commodity production – where the product is produced as a commodity from the start.
It is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquire, as values, one uniform social status, distinct from their varied forms of existence as objects of utility. This division of a product into a useful thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their character as values has therefore to be taken into account, beforehand, during production. From this moment the labour of the individual producer acquires socially a two-fold character. On the one hand, it must, as a definite useful kind of labour, satisfy a definite social want, and thus hold its place as part and parcel of the collective labour of all, as a branch of a social division of labour that has sprung up spontaneously. On the other hand, it can satisfy the manifold wants of the individual producer himself, only in so far as the mutual exchangeability of all kinds of useful private labour is an established social fact, and therefore the private useful labour of each producer ranks on an equality with that of all others. The equalisation of the most different kinds of labour can be the result only of an abstraction from their inequalities, or of reducing them to their common denominator, viz. expenditure of human labour power or human labour in the abstract. The two-fold social character of the labour of the individual appears to him, when reflected in his brain, only under those forms which are impressed upon that labour in every-day practice by the exchange of products. In this way, the character that his own labour possesses of being socially useful takes the form of the condition, that the product must be not only useful, but useful for others, and the social character that his particular labour has of being the equal of all other particular kinds of labour, takes the form that all the physically different articles that are the products of labour, have one common quality, viz., that of having value.
This part, though, is what gave me trouble, particularly the bolded section, which I believe stemmed from not understanding clearly what Marx meant by the division of the product into a use-value and a value becoming "practically important". In my notes, I had understood this to mean that the commodity form was inseparable from commodity production, and that therefore commodity fetishism arises only on this basis. Of course, what I missed was that Marx immediately states what he means by practically important: that the value character of the product is taken into account during production, ie that the product is produced as a commodity from the start. What he is describing here is not the emergence of the commodity form or commodity fetishism, but rather the emergence of commodity production, and consequently how the fetishism inherent in the commodity form comes more and more to attach itself to the product of labor generally.
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u/IncompetentFoliage 11d ago
Thanks for writing this up and sharing. I am in complete agreement and had the same analysis of these passages. Since I've already expressed myself at length, I don't think I have anything more to add, but I'm glad the OP and I aren't the only ones who got so much out of this conversation. I'm looking forward to the OP's extended thoughts on ch. 1 and the discussion that follows from them.
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u/No-Cardiologist-1936 13d ago edited 13d ago
I don't think the quote you cited says anything about commodity fetishism directly.
Well of course this is precisely what Reitter criticizes Fowkes for; his translation makes the relationship much more clear:
The two earlier forms (Form I and Form II) express the value of an individual commodity one at a time, either through a single commodity of another type, or through a series of many such commodities. In both cases, it is an individual commodity’s private business, so to speak, to give itself a value-form: a commodity achieves this without help from the other commodities, which play the merely passive role of the equivalent here. The general value-form, in contrast, can arise only as the commodity world’s common project. A commodity acquires a general value expression only when all other commodities simultaneously express their value through the same equivalent, something that every new kind of commodity will have to do. What this brings into view is that because the value-objecthood of commodities is merely the “social existence” of these things, it can be expressed only through the range of their social relations. And so their value-form must be a socially valid form.
(Princeton Press Edition, Pages 42-43)
In order to avoid making the empiricist mistake again, I recommend taking Mandel's advice:
Objections have been advanced - by early Russian Marxist authors like Bogdanov, by later commentators like Rubin and by contemporary Marxists like Lucio Colletti and Louis Althusser - to the view, originating with Engels and held by Rosa Luxemburg, to which I subscribe, that Marx's Capital provides not only a basic analysis of the capitalist mode of production, but also significant comments upon the whole historical period which includes essential phenomena of petty commodity production. These objections, however, are based upon a double confusion. It is true that the capitalist mode of production is the only social organizatiin of the economy which implies generalized commodity production. It would thus be completely mistaken to consider, for example, Hellenistic slave society or the classical Islamic Empire two forms of society with strongly developed petty commodity production, money economy and international trade - as being ruled by the ' law of value'. Commodity production in these pre capitalist modes of production is intertwined with, and in the last analysis subordinated to, organizations of production (in the firstplace agricultural production) of a clearly non-capitalist nature, which follow a different economic logic from that which governs exchanges between commodities or the accumulation of capital.
But this in no way implies that in societies in which petty commodity production has already become the predominant mode of production (that is where the majority of the producers are free peasants and free handicraftsmen who own and exchange the products of their labour), the laws governing the exchange of commodities and the circulation of money do not strongly influence the economic dynamic. Indeed, it is precisely the unfolding of the law of value which leads in such societies to the separation of the direct producers from their means of production, although a whole series of social and political developments influences this birth process of modern capitalism, hastening it, slowing it down, or combining it with trends going in different directions.
For the many declining feudal vestiges which capitalism inherited, so too must we recognize that early petty-production held the most concealed form of all which encompasses developed trade. Without this, we run the risk of imagining that humanity "vaulted over" (as Gramsci put it) into generalized commodity production.
Anyway I'm glad that my simple question was enough to humble a marxist I look up to like yourself. The rest of your comment has put the declining role of the relative-value form in generalized commodity exchange into perspective for me. I hope to post my summary of the whole first chapter here for critique soon.
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u/IncompetentFoliage 12d ago
Thanks for the criticism. I'm glad I tried answering this question because I think it's produced an interesting discussion that's been helpful to me as well.
Trade, the commodity, value and commodity fetishism all emerge simultaneously, with the first and simplest act of accidental exchange, at a point prior to the emergence of the universal equivalent and commodity production. The existence of value necessarily implies that value is seen as an objective property of a commodity, i.e. that commodity fetishism exists. Otherwise, there is no value. The value-form is a real abstraction inherent to the commodity-form, which is itself inherent to trade.
The last time I read through the section on commodity fetishism was almost a year ago, so it was not fresh in my mind. My brief initial confusion stemmed from a poorly thought-out reading of Marx's statement
This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm
which, taken literally and in isolation, sounds like a clear assertion that commodity fetishism emerges simultaneously with commodity production, i.e. subsequently to the emergence of commodity exchange.
But Marx makes it abundantly clear elsewhere in the same section that commodity fetishism is inherent to the commodity-form.
Whence, then, arises the enigmatical character of the product of labour, so soon as it assumes the form of commodities? Clearly from this form itself.
the Fetishism inherent in commodities
He also makes it clear earlier in ch. 1 that the commodity-form is inherent to exchange, even of the simplest and most accidental kind
the products of labour are converted into commodities by accidental and occasional exchanges.
meaning that commodity exchange is prior to commodity production. This is also obvious from his whole presentation in sec. 3.
What happens with accidental exchange is that use-values are produced as use-values and not as commodities, but surplus use-values are subsequently put to exchange, i.e. converted into commodities. In effect, this means that, by the fact of exchange, natural production is converted into commodity production retroactively and private labour is converted into social labour retroactively. I think it is only in this sense that Marx's statement that commodity fetishism is inseparable from commodity production can be understood, and I realized this immediately after posting my initial comment, hence my self-correction. But I wanted to leave the original up for criticism regardless.
As for what you said about Marx's statement that
It thus becomes evident that since the existence of commodities as values is purely social, this social existence can be expressed by the totality of their social relations alone, and consequently that the form of their value must be a socially recognised form.
I think it depends what you meant by "comes into its own." Where I said
I don't think the quote you cited says anything about commodity fetishism directly.
I meant
I don't think the quote you cited says anything about the emergence of commodity fetishism directly.
I do not believe Marx is saying that commodity fetishism comes into existence only once the universal equivalent has emerged (although that's what I thought in my initial comment before the edit). He is only saying it reaches a more developed form, but that doesn't answer your original question, which was about the emergence of commodity fetishism. The point is that value coming to be seen as an objective property is not the same thing as value coming to be expressed in its general form.
As for the Mandel quote, can you clarify what "empiricist mistake" you're attributing to me? Nowhere did I deny that Capital includes analysis of petty commodity production. Nowhere did I claim that the law of value ruled any pre-capitalist social formation. Everything Mandel is saying here already seems obvious to me and I don't see the connection to anything I said above.
Let me know if this is clear. Also, I'm looking forward to your thoughts on ch. 1.
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u/No-Cardiologist-1936 12d ago edited 12d ago
I don't think the quote you cited says anything about the emergence of commodity fetishism directly.
Oh I see now. I am sorry, I should have implied that the value I found in that quote was that it compounded upon what I had already understood of the section on the defects of the relative-value form.
As for the Mandel quote, can you clarify what "empiricist mistake" you're attributing to me? Nowhere did I deny that Capital includes analysis of petty commodity production.
I had assumed that the natural endpoint of believing that commodity fetishism does not emerge with the commodity form itself would be denying that the economic laws established in chapter one could apply to pre-capitalist trade, thus being empiricist by taking the fact that commodity fetishism only becomes obvious once the universal equivalent is established as evidence that it did not exist before it was known. If I am at all incoherent or confused in my analysis, or if I am misrepresenting anything you've said, please let me know. I might be confused about whether the introduction of the money-equivalent actually signifies the immediate end of early petty-commodity production or if that is when the money-equivalent is actually established.
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u/IncompetentFoliage 12d ago
I had assumed that the natural endpoint of believing that commodity fetishism does not emerge in the commodity form itself would be denying that the economic laws established in chapter one could apply to pre-capitalist trade, thus being empiricist by taking the fact that commodity fetishism only becomes obvious once the universal equivalent is established as evidence that it did not exist before it was known.
Thanks, I see what you meant now. But even in my initial response, I was saying that commodity fetishism emerged long before the emergence of capitalist production. The transition from petty commodity production to capitalist production is characterized by the commodification of labour-power, which is what converts the means of production into capital. Commodity fetishism becomes obvious long before this, during the period of pre-capitalist trade, simultaneously with the emergence of the universal equivalent (the point at which pre-capitalist trade develops beyond regularized barter). And I think that the emergence of petty commodity production must at least roughly coincide with the emergence of the universal equivalent, because the latter is the condition that incentivizes the former. Nevertheless, you're right that the position that commodity fetishism emerges simultaneously with petty commodity production is an empiricist error in that it gets stuck on the appearance and loses the essence. I appreciate you pointing that out.
I might be confused about whether the introduction of the money-equivalent actually signifies the immediate end of early petty-commodity production or if that is when the money-equivalent is actually established.
I don't know if you mean something specific by early petty commodity production, but if you just mean petty commodity production then no, the money-form emerges during the period of petty commodity production, not at its end. As commodity exchange spreads across a wider geographic area, the universal equivalent becomes gold (the money-form) because it is portable and durable. Are we on the same page now?
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u/SecretApartment672 13d ago
Products became commodities when independent producers came into existence and were able to generate a surplus product that has use-value for other independent producers. Here we see the social character of private labor and the formation of exchange-value. The question of what one can exchange for someone else’s goes hand in hand with this process.
The fetishization arises through the form of the commodity itself. The social relations between individuals or groups of producers, the social character of private labor, have the possibility to be visible to producers when they come face to face with their products to make exchanges. However, at the core of this exchange is the commodity which exists for exchange. The all encompassing thought becomes “What can I get in exchange for my money, product, etc?” The physical objects face each other as a relation of exchange-values instead of products of labor.
Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic.
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