The Fetishism of Commodities

As Marx explicates, the commodity is not complicated and easy to understand as long as it is tied to its use-value. When a piece of metal is turned into a bed frame through human labor, its use-value is obvious and the bed frame, as a product, remains connected to its material use. However, as soon as the bed frame "emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness". Once it is perceived as a commodity, the social relations changes. It turns to a commodity that is now exchangeable goods for the equivalent value. As Marx state, a product has no value within itself unless it is seen in the relation to other product or products. Therefore, value is immaterial but objective. Unfortunately, in a capitalist society people take things for granted it. They begin to treat commodities as if the value is within the products themselves, rather than paying attention or appreciating the amount of labor has been put to make that product. Marx posits, "The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men's own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things". This process makes it complicated because the social relation according to people is then the exchange value rather than the use vale.

Individuals see social relation between the commodities because they pay the equivalent value rather than noticing the social relation between capitalist and exploited labor. Since we build the social relation only with the product, the producers of those commodities remain largely invisible and far away from our sights. Doing so, we provide them not only with more money but also power to exploit the labor market even more. Although human labor plays an important role in determining the value, people in capitalist society are led to accept that they are not in control of any market forces. However, the reality is that the capitalists leave us with no choice but they provide us with the plenty of options to select. For example, there is not much different between Iphone 5, 6 and 6plus. Although these phones are not much needed, the price people pay for them is insane. We do not question the price because Apple is the only company that owns the means of production. We buy them and raise the demand in the market. Therefore, they can supply more. Meanwhile, we do not care what raw materials are used to make it or who are exploited in the process to make those phones. The only thing we know is that since everyone is buying them we should buy it too no matter how hard we work and even get exploited to afford that price. This is how we fuel the cycle of “commodity fetishism” in the society.