Given other people tried to explain as well, I’ll try to do this more succinctly. We are in a market society, right? We sell our work, and the companies we work for sell commodities (or commoditized services). Then with the money we buy commodities that satisfy our wants, right? (Basically, the C-M-C circuit in the Capital). Our social relations in our current society are of buyers and sellers. When we buy stuff or when other people buy stuff, we are actually maintaining a social relation with other people, which don’t happen directly, but happen by the intermediation of commodities. Here we see an inversion, an interaction between people become an interaction between things.
However capitalism requires accumulation (increasing capital). They need to do so, in order to develop their own capital. The capital exists not only to satisfy more of the capitalist wants, but to increase the constant part of capital (automation, processes, machinery). They need this because the competitive nature of the market drives them to outcompete other capitalists in the same sector, or to compete against new developing sectors in the capitalist economy that intend to make them obsolete (think about Google developing their own models and integrating it in its own search bar, to fight the influence of ChatGPT replacing Google search; or streaming services like Netflix battling against cable-tv providers in the past; or oil companies battling renewable energy companies and forcing industry to rely on fossil fuel). But in this competition and capital accumulation process, there’s another inversion. Capital dictates the capitalists. They end up in this never ending number maxing game because competition drives them towards it.
So that’s what commodity fetishism is about. The things we produce dictate our relationships. And capital dictates the course of production and distribution, not our own free will. In other words, the freedom that pro-capitalism supporters advocate for is actually their own prison. And they are so immersed in the process that they don’t even realize it.
So, with our deteriorating environment, our society is so dominated by this logic of capital accumulation that it’s even affecting our reproduction as society. We are not producing things to satisfy our needs, we are producing because capitalism dictates us to do so. So we don’t even care that we destroy the very things that make our very life sustainable. Capital becomes an end on itself.
Given other people tried to explain as well, I’ll try to do this more succinctly. We are in a market society, right? We sell our work, and the companies we work for sell commodities (or commoditized services). Then with the money we buy commodities that satisfy our wants, right? (Basically, the C-M-C circuit in the Capital). Our social relations in our current society are of buyers and sellers. When we buy stuff or when other people buy stuff, we are actually maintaining a social relation with other people, which don’t happen directly, but happen by the intermediation of commodities. Here we see an inversion, an interaction between people become an interaction between things.
However capitalism requires accumulation (increasing capital). They need to do so, in order to develop their own capital. The capital exists not only to satisfy more of the capitalist wants, but to increase the constant part of capital (automation, processes, machinery). They need this because the competitive nature of the market drives them to outcompete other capitalists in the same sector, or to compete against new developing sectors in the capitalist economy that intend to make them obsolete (think about Google developing their own models and integrating it in its own search bar, to fight the influence of ChatGPT replacing Google search; or streaming services like Netflix battling against cable-tv providers in the past; or oil companies battling renewable energy companies and forcing industry to rely on fossil fuel). But in this competition and capital accumulation process, there’s another inversion. Capital dictates the capitalists. They end up in this never ending number maxing game because competition drives them towards it.
So that’s what commodity fetishism is about. The things we produce dictate our relationships. And capital dictates the course of production and distribution, not our own free will. In other words, the freedom that pro-capitalism supporters advocate for is actually their own prison. And they are so immersed in the process that they don’t even realize it.
So, with our deteriorating environment, our society is so dominated by this logic of capital accumulation that it’s even affecting our reproduction as society. We are not producing things to satisfy our needs, we are producing because capitalism dictates us to do so. So we don’t even care that we destroy the very things that make our very life sustainable. Capital becomes an end on itself.