(This
is based on and mostly from “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo
Saad-Filho)
(For Part-8, please
see the blog entry dated 19-1-2012)
Chapter-2—Commodity
production
The Fetishism of
commodities
- In
our earlier study, we came to the conclusion :
a)
The concrete labours (different kinds of
labours) produce different kinds of use values (useful things) at
different workplaces.
b)
In the exchange of these use values as commodities
in the market, these concrete labours are brought together and measured against
each other.
c)
Such measuring of concrete labours against each
other is possible since all concrete labours (all the different kinds of
labours) are nothing but abstract human labour or abstract labour (labour in which the brain and muscle of
human beings is expended).
d)
The measurement of the abstract labour is done as
socially necessary labour time, that is labour time socially required to
produce the commodity. Thus the value of a commodity is equal to the socially
necessary labour time required to produce it.
e)
The prices of commodities in the market in money
terms express the fluctuations around this value (labour time socially
necessary to produce the commodity) depending on the supply and demand, skills, scarcities, monopolies,
tastes etc.
f)
In
essence what is involved in the exchange of commodities is a social relation,
the socially necessary labour labour time for producing the commodities. It is
essentially the relationship between the labour of the individual producer to
the sum total of the labour of all the producers. The value of a commodity is
nothing but the measuring the labour of the individual producer with the total
labour of the society, that is social labour.
- But
to many economists contemporary to Marx and to all subsequent mainstream
economists, this relationship between the workers and the products of
their labour does not appear as a social relation (that is, the the value
of the commodity as the socially necessary labour time, as a social
relation wherein the labour of the worker is measured as part of the total
labour of the society). It appeared as a relation between things, say x
commodity=y commodity, or one worker week=so much standard of living (wage
bundle).
- Thus
while capitalism organises production in definite social relationships
between the capitalists and workers, these relationships are expressed as
and appear in part as, relationships between things, the relations between
commodities. These relationships are further mystified when money enters
into consideration, and every thing is analysed in terms of price.
- Marx
calls such a perspective on capitalist world where the relations between
people in producing the use values appear as the relationships between the
commodities, as the fetishism of the commodities (fetishism
is the attribution of religious or mystical qualities to inanimate
objects) of commodities. Thus under this commodity fetishism, the
commodities are attributed mystical qualities which actually they do not
have. They appear as if they are independent beings endowed with life, and
entering into relation with one another and with the human race.
- This
fetishism is most apparent in modern economics where labour power is
treated as an input or factor like any other factor or input. According to
them, the factor labour power gives the reward of wage to the worker and
the factors of means of production (land, building, machinery, raw
materials) give the reward of profit to the capitalist. Thus the inanimate
object machene was attributed the mysterious quality of rewarding profit
to the capitalist! This, Marx called as ‘Commodity fetishism”.
- Under
feudalism, the kings, nobles and priests took possession of the products
of the labour of the peasants or artisans without any remuneration. But
the the God, who is the creation of
human beings, justifies such relationship of exploitation and it appears
as if that relationship of exploitation was ordered by the God and by
birth some are kings and by birth some are peasants.
- The
newly arisen capitalist class in England and especially in France
questioned this fetishism of religion where in the exploitative
relationship appears as a divine order. They campaigned that all men were
equal by birth and the feudal exploitation, the exploitation of peasants
by the kings, lords and priests should end.
- But
capitalism itself has its own God and bible. The place of religion is
substituted by free market exchange. It is said that in market, the owners
of commodities exchange their commodities freely on the basis of
negotiation and bargain. It is also said that the worker is the owner of his
commodity labour power, and in the market, he sells it at his own free
will, to the capitalist in return for wage. Therefore it is a just order
free from exploitation.
- Thus
the exploitation of the worker is concealed behind the exchange of
commodities in the market. But there is a major difference between the
religious fetishism and commodity fetishism. Whereas a God is a mental
creation without any actual existence, the commodities have a real
existence, and their exchange represents, and to some extent conceals the
real social relationship of production. Similarly the price system exists
and is attached to the broader economic and social system, but without
making the nature of such social system transparent.
- In
particular, buying and selling commodities does not reveal the
circumstances by which they have come to the market, or the exploitation
of the direct producers of the commodities, the wage labourers, by the
capitalist class.
- To
reveal the nature of this exploitation, Marx’s emphasis is upon prices as
value system determined by the class relations (relations between
capitalists and workers) of production and exploitation.
- This
commodity fetishism where the class relations in production appear as
exchange relations between commodities, results in alienation. Alienation
means the separation of things that naturally belong together. Alienation
in society (social alienation) means separation of people from aspects of
their human nature.
- In
capitalist society neither the worker nor the capitalist is able to be the
director of their own actions. The worker is divorced from the product of
his labour since it is owned by the owner, the capitalist. Besides this,
the worker has no control on the work process itself. Since the worker
sells his labour power to the capitalist, the way of exercising that
labour power, that is, the labour process, is decided by the capitalist.
Thus the worker has no control on his work process and on it the product
of his work. He is alienated from both.
- The
capitalist also is alienated in capitalist society. His actions are not
decided by himself. His actions are decided by the imperatives of profit,
competition, stock market etc. Thus the capitalist is subject to social
control.
- For
both the capitalist and the worker it appears that external powers exert
this control, and not their social relations in production, as capitalist
and worker. When a capitalist becomes bankrupt, or when a woker loses job,
they blame an impersonal force or thing like the break down of a machene,
changes in the consumer preferences, competition or economic crisis, but
will not understand it as the result of the capitalist relations of
production, as the result of the relations of production established
between them as capitalist and worker.
- Now
a days “globalisation” has been understood as a generic (characteristic of
the whole group), especially religious term, as being able to explain all
things good or bad about contemporary capitalism.
- But
on what basis competition, economic crisis and globalisation have to be
understood? To do this, we must go beyond this mysticism. We must start
witha clear understanding of the social relations underpinning the
capitalist production, rather than fetishise (attribute religious or
mystique qualities) its effects.
- But
however well understood, it is not possible to wish away the price system
by an act of will. But like the religious fetishism, the underlying
realities of capitalist system are grasped from time to time through the
consequences of daily practices. The reflection of such realities (like
unemployment, poverty, price rise, vast inequalities, economic crisis) becomes the subject of both material and
ideological struggle(The occupy wall street movement in the highly
developed capitalist country USA questioning the inequalities in the
capitalist system is an example in this regard).
- The
existence of profits, interest and rent indicates that capitalism is
exploitative; the unemployment, economic crisis, vast inequalities,
environmental degradation and so on are making the realities of capitalism
transparent.
- This
raises two closely related and hotly debated issues:
a) The
first is methodological and analytical question of how to order the diverse
empirical (known by direct observation) outcomes associated with capitalism.
Can we deal with inequality independent of class relations—the relations
between capitalist class, working class, landlords, peasantry etc? Can we deal
with poverty apart from economic and other forms of exploitation? Can we deal
with growth separately from crisis?
b) The
second is , to what extent are such conditions like unemployment, poverty and
economic crisis are endemic ( natural character) to capitalism and
whether they can be reformable within capitalism?
- One
of the strengths of Marx’s “Capital”, acknowledged by friend and
foe alike, is that it has pointed out the systematic character of
capitalism, that is, the inherent character of capitalism and its
essential features. By the same token, Marxism’s antipathy to reformism
(reforming the capitalist system) other than as a broad strategy for
socialism, is based on the inevitable limitations within the confines
imposed by capitalism.
- The
concept of commodity fetishism evolved by Marx forges a link with his
earlier theory of alienation in his work “Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844’’ (the year 1844). The 1844 theory of alienation is
centred on the individual,s relationship to physical and mental activity,
fellow beings and consciousness of these processes. In “Capital”, after
extensive study, Marx is able to make explicit the coercive forces exerted
by the capitalist society on the individual. These coercive forces are the
compulsion for profit and wage and the subtle distortions by which these
forces are ideologically justified: abstinence, work ethic, freedom of
exchange and other aspects of commodity fetishism. Marx’s theory of
alienation places the individual in a class position (individual belonging
to a class- capitalist class, working class, landlord class, peasantry,
agricultural labour etc) and analyses the perception (awareness) of that
position.
- Such
analysis based on the position in the class is not about the powerless
individual in an unexplained system of irrationality, impersonality,
inequality, authoritarianism, bureaucracy or whatever. These phenomena
have their own character and function in capitalist society at a
particular time. They can be only understood as a whole or in relation to
individuals against the perspectives of the workings of the capitalism.
This will be
explained in our further study.
కామెంట్లు లేవు:
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి