Karl Marx Capital, Chapter One: Commodities/the Fetishism of Commodities

The mode of production is capitalism and wealth is measured in the collection of commodities.

Individual commodity is an external object that poses qualities that satisfy a particular human need. A need? What is the difference between a need and a want of a commodity? At what level of societal acceptance of want of the commodity makes it then a societal need? According to Marx, the nature of the need (how it comes to be) makes no difference, and how it satisfies the need makes no difference (can be direct or indirect).

I think the idea of a commodity as a fetish speaks to its indirect quality and the idea of a want becoming a need. For this to happen, Marx claims it involves larger society, which I believe means there is some agreement, which means there is a need. Really there is no need, and this is how we become mass consumers, because we think that we need these things only because we think that others want them or will want to exchange them. A commodity is a whole composed of many useful properties, which are only societal inventions of standards.

John Locke: “The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life”.  It is this idea that makes people into slaves and takes nature for granted.

Also, if value exists only in exchange and nothing has intrinsic value, then how do you explain sentimental value? This is only assuming that people are a part of the exchange system.  So then do human beings have value?

Without use-value, the commodity is just a product of labor. The value of a commodity is related to the value of any other commodity as the labor-time necessary for the production of one to the production of the other. How is this embodied in cheap oversea labor associated with globalization? How does it affect western value of the commodity? Greater productivity equals less time and less crystallized labor which means less value.

A thing can be a use value without being a value when it’s utility to man is not mediated through labor, like nature. A thing can be useful and not be a commodity.The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant if the labor-time required also remained constant. So what happens when less labor is required and more can be made?

He who satisfies his own need with the product of his own labor admittingly creates use values, but not commodities. For commodities, he would not only have to created use values, he would also have to create social use values. But it has to be exchanged. If the thing is useless then so is the labor in it, which I believe is what makes invention so difficult.

The labor of a private individual manifests itself as an element of the total labor of society through exchange; material relations between persons and social relations between things.This is why you can basically buy the same products at a scale of prices. Those with more money pay more for their goods because they have more money.

Value is a relation between persons, a relation concealed behind a material shell. It is not actually the product that causes the relation, so how does this play into the notion of a commodity being a fetish?