Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Commodity Fetishism Author(s): Arthur Ripstein Reviewed work(s): Source: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Dec., 1987), pp. 733-748 Published by: Canadian Journal of Philosophy Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231565 . Accessed: 12/11/2011 07:31
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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume 17, Number 4, December 1987, pp. 733-748

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Fetishism* Commodity
ARTHURRIPSTEIN University of Toronto Toronto, ON Canada M5S 1A1

Criticismand sarcasmare interspersed with description and analysis throughout Marx'swork. Most of the criticismis aimed at one or another side of a single target: what Marx sees as capitalism'spretensions of freedom, equality, and prosperity in the face of exploitation and recurrentcrises. But the remarkson commodity fetishism in the first volume of Capital seem to be directed at a different target. Here Marx tells us that a commodity is 'a queer thing, abounding in metaphysicalsubtleties and theologicalniceties.'1But instead of going on to reveal the nature of commodites- the task that occupies him for the preceding 30 and subsequent 700 pages- Marxtakes the opportunity to explore their 'mystical'character.The passage repays careful consideration. is one of the few placesin his maturewritingsin which It Marxreturns to the tone of his youthful works. It is also the passage in which commentatorshave claimed to find grounds for attributing a doctrine of 'false consciousness' to Marx. Marx seems to be saying that capitalism is necessarily mystifying:
There it is a definite social relation between men that assumes in their eyes the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world, the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This

* I wish to thank Peter King for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Without his help, it too was in danger of becoming an institution independent of my will. 1 Karl Marx Capital, Vol. I, trans. Moore and Aveling (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1954), 78. All quotations cited only by page number are from this text.

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I call the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which therefore is inseparable from the production of commodities. (78)

The final sentence should give us pause. The claim that religious belief is inseparable from treating gods as independent forces is easy enough to make out; worship of beings that are not independent of our practicesis pointless. Grantingthe adequacyof the suggested account of the origins of religion,2the importanceof the fetish is obvious. Religionendows human creationswith supernaturalpowers, and that endowment accompanies subsequent religious belief. The parallelclaim about commodity production is harder to make out. If Marx is right, the mistake of fetishism is impossible to avoid in capitalist production. The parallel with religious fetishism would be completeif the fetishismof commoditieswere the precondition,both genetically and logically, of the origin and continued existence of capitalism. It is just such a failing that Marx accuses capitalism of. I But what kind of errorcould be inseparablefrom commodity production? Most commentatorson the passage have assumed that the mystery arises at the level of thought: Commodity production leads the specifproduction,which is a historically producersto mistakecapitalist ic social formation, for a system of naturallaws, and thereby assimilate the social dimension along which commodities are compared-price, or, in Marx'sterms, exchange value- to a natural dimension like size or weight.3 G.A. Cohen clearly and forcefullyadvocates this interpretation:
We may summarize the doctrine of commodity fetishism as follows:

2 Marx takes this account from Feuerbach. See Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper and Row 1957). 3 For example: G.A. Cohen, KarlMarx'sTheoryof History:a Defense(Princeton: Princeton University Press 1978); Lezek Kolakowski, Main Currentsof Marxism, Vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1978); Carol Gould, Marx'sSocialOntology(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1980); and Jon Elster, Making Sense Of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985). Georg Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1971) may be a notable exception to the dominant reading, but poses many of the same problems of interpretation that Marx does.

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1. The labour of persons takes the form of the exchange value of things. 2. Things do have exchange value. 3. They do not have it autonomously. 4. They appear to have it autonomously. 5. Exchange value, and the illusion accompanying it, are not permanent, but peculiar to a determinate form of society.4

As Cohen says in summary, 'Mysteryarises because the social character of productionis expressed only in exchange, not in production itself/5 A commodity reallyis the product of human interactionsunder to specific historic circumstances,but appears haveexchange value as a natural feature just as is has any other natural feature. In a capitalisteconomy, all commodities are exchangeablefor each other via what Marxcalls the 'universal equivalent/ money. This exchangebilityis apparentto all, as it is the preconditionof purchaseand sale. It also seems to be autonomous, resting on nothing but itself, just as mass is a property of objects depending on nothing else. Marxdescribes an underlying reality that differs starklyfrom what the fetishist perceives. He holds a labor theory of value, accordingto which commodities are exchangeablein the ratios they are in virtue of a specificfeatureof their conditions of production.The value of any commodity, and thus its exchangeabilitywith any other commodity, is a function of the amount of labortime necessary to produce another like it at the time of its sale. Price may deviate from exchange value due to a variety of factors external and accidental to the production process: conditions of availability,scarcity,and the short-termadvantages of innovation. But labortime is the primarydeterminantaround which conditionsof sale fluctuate.Labortime in turn has two immediate components: the living labor used in actual production, and the accumulatedpast labor stored up in the tools and raw materialsused in production. The value of the labor power actuallyused in production is added directlyto the product, while the value of the tools and raw materialsused are transferredto it in proportionas they are used up. Since both raw materialsand tools have the value they do in virtue of the labor time necessary to theirproduction, the entire value of any commodity is resolved into the amount of labor time socially necessaryfor its production.Thus exchangeabilityproves to be the result of human activity under specific conditions; it is not an inherent property of things.

4 Cohen, 116-17 5 Cohen 119 (italics removed)

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Since Marx'sday, the labortheory of value has fallen on hard times. Fora varietyof reasons, most Marxistsare no longer willing to endorse it.6 Separatedfrom the labor theory of value, the charge of fetishism can still be leveled: exchangeabilityrests on human activities, rather than inherentpropertiesof commodities.Fetishismis thus an epistemic problem- the mistaking of appearance for reality. Cohen's reading recommends itself on a number of grounds. First, it sits well with Marx'scomments about two contrastingcases. Marx firstconsidersRobinsonCrusoewho, 'in spite of the varietyof his work, knows that his labor, whatever its form, is the result of one and the same Robinson,and consequentlythat it consists of nothing but differThereis no room for illusion on Robinent modes of human labor'(81). son's part, because his products are so clearlythe result of his toil and nothing else, and each particularproduct is clearly the result of the particularefforts requiredto make it. In the same way, the medieval peasant and lord are under no illusions about what part of the serf's product belongs to each, nor about whose activity is responsible for the entire product. 'No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performanceof their labor, appearat all events as their own mutual personal relations, and are not disguised in the shape of social relationsbetween the products of their labor'(82).Like Robinson, the serf recognizes his own efforts in all of his products. He has plenty of room for illusion about the groundsof the claimsthe lord and priestmakeon his activityand product, though he cannot help but realize that their share of his product is the direct result of their making those claims. In contrast, the worker in capitalism does not recognize the social basis of the division of his product, for the division of income seems to be entirely the result of the relative values of what each comes to the marketto sell. The worker sells only labor power, so gets a small return, while the capitalistsells the valuable commodities produced, and so gets a greater return. The resulting distribution seems to be the result of a relation between things -the relative prices of items sold-rather than a relationbetween people. The serf, in contrast,sees that his surrenderof partof his productis a matterof a social relations. In charging capitalism with creating a false image of itself, Marx seems to be returning to a theme of his early manuscript 'Estranged

6 For a sample of such reasons, including Cohen's own, see Ian Steedman et al., The Value Controversy(London: Verso/New Left Books 1981), as well as Elster, 127-41.

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Labor/ where he takes politicaleconomy to task because 'it does not those laws, i.e., it does not demonstrate how they arise comprehend from the very nature of private property. Politicaleconomy does not disclose the source of the division between laborand capital... it takes the interest of the capitalistto be the ultimate cause, i.e. it takes for granted what it is supposed to explain.'7 We can see why capitalismwould engender just the mistake Cohen describes. The relation between the producer and consumer of any product is direct on Robinson's island or in the Feudal manor. In a capitalistsociety, however, the relation is mediated by a generalized processof exchange,the marketin which every thing can be exchanged for every other thing. That appearancecan lead the unsuspecting to concludethat it is the whole story. Pre-copernican astronomyprovides a helpful parallelhere: because the sun and the stars look like they revolve aroundthe earth, it was naturalto assume that they really did revolve around the earth. Such assumptions, however natural, completely miss the underlyingreality.Comparedto mountainsor houses, the sun seems to move; compared to each other, commodities seem to have exchange value intrinsically.Both the movement of the sun and the movement of commodities are encountered initially as coherent domains, in that each seems to comprise its own set of laws, and so to demand no further explanation. The same illusion obtains about the one commodity that the worker has to sell. Likeevery other commodity, laborpower seems to be naturallyexchangeable.Marxobserves, 'The capitalistepoch is therefore characterized this, that laborpower takes in the eyes of the laborer by himself the form of a commodity which is his property' (172n). The contrastingsituation in post-capitalistsociety is markedby the absence of illusion:
The social relations of the individual producers, with regard to both their labor and to its products, are in this case perfectly simple and intelligible, and that with regard not only to production but also to distribution. (83)

In short, the red flag and the Owl of Minerva fly together.

7 Karl Marx, 'Estranged Labor/ in Karl Marx: Early Writings, Quinton Hoare, ed. (London: Penguin and New Left Books 1975)

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II In spite of its adequacy to the text and to parts of Marx'sgeneral outlook, Cohen'sreadingof the fetishism passage has an unwelcome consequence: it makes fetishism a relatively shallow and uninteresting problem.8It is hardly surprisingthat capitalismshould engender illusions about its own workings. If it didn't, there would have been no The need for Marxto write Capital. fact that capitalismengenders illusions, and the mannerin which it does so, is germane to understanding its workings in a way that the illusion of the sun revolving around the earthis not. Yet in discussing commodity fetishism, Marxstresses neither the mechanism of its origin nor its ideological role. Instead he describes it in a tone from which the reader is expected to recognize of that the existence of fetishism is an indictment capitalism. The limitationsof Cohen's readingemerge when one considers how the problem of fetishism might be solved. Marx clearly means to be offering a criticism of capitalism, and hence one would expect his description of the problem to contain, at least implicitly, some view of how it might be overcome. Cohen correctlypoints out that the solution to fetishism in political economy resembles the solution to fetishism in religion in one crucial respect. Marx's fourth Thesis on makes the point in the case of religion: Feuerbach
Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world and a real one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an independent realm can only be explained by the cleavages and contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must itself, therefore, first be understood in its contradiction, and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionized in practice.9

Merely recognizing that religion is the product of human aspirations is not enough to make it go away; the social conditions that make religion importantmust also be abolished. Thereare two ways this claim might be interpreted:First,as an empiricalclaim about the conditions under which religious believers will come to recognize the source of

8 Cohen acknowledges that it is hard to imagine anyone seriously believeing that commodities have their exchange value intrinsically (127 n.l). 9 Karl Marx, 'Eleven Theses on Feuerbach' in Quinton Hoare, ed., KarlMarx: Early Writings, 422

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their beliefs; alternatively,we might construe it as the much bolder claimthat an individual'srecognitionof the source of religion will not abolishreligionbecause the fetish transcendsindividualconsciousness of it. In the case of religion, it is clear that the first reading is to be preferred.Feuerbach,and those who take him seriously, are in a position to overcome religious fetishism. They can do so in isolation from the pious masses precisely because the religious fetish occurs at the level of consciousness,and does not transcendthe individual.Once one realizes that gods are the product of human aspirations,the fetish is dispelled. And it is dispelled even if one comes to that realizationthrough a roundabout or confused route. One need not see how the illusion is generated, so long as one sees that it is generated. But so long as the secularbasis of religionremainsintact, most people will be unable to see even this. A correspondingpair of readings is availablefor the corresponding claim made about the commodity fetish: either the fetish can be overcome on an individual basis through recognition of its falsity even if it will continue to arise in others, or it is a condition that can survive individualawareness of it because it transcendsindividual consciousness. This time, the firstreadingis inadequate.On that reading, those who have read Marx,or for that matter, Smith, Ricardo,and perhaps even Samuelson, are in a position to overcome commodity fetishism becausethey realize,however incompletely,thatcommoditiesexchange at the ratiosthey do becauseof the conditionsof theirproduction,even if they do not recognize exactly how exchangeabilitycomes to seem otherwise. In reading a thinker like Marx, one must be prepared to some errorsand misconceptionsto him. If possible we should attribute avoid attributingtoo much concern about a mistake that can be remedied by reading his own works. Thus we are left with the alternative reading-commodity fetishismis a conditionthat transcendsindividual consciousness of it. In what follows, I will argue that for Marx, the problem is not that socialrelationsbetween people seemto berelationsbetween things, but that in an importantsense they arerelationsbetween things. The deep errorinvolved in taking commodities to have value in their own right comes not from the sense in which it is false, but from the sense in which it is true.10

10 That requires that I explain away Marx's use of terms like 'appears' and 'in their eyes' in the text. Marx's use of visual metaphors must be recognized as just thatmetaphorical. He certainly does not mean to suggest that commodities look like

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III Beforedeveloping the alternative,though, we should considerin more detail the kindof error that fetishism would be on Cohen's reading. Marxcriticizescapitalismfrom several perspectives. Partof Marx'scritique of capitalismappeals to the interests of workers as workers, in having a greatershare of the proceeds of production, and greatercontrol over the conditions of their labor. Marx'sanalysis of the cyclical nature of capitalistcrises, and his stress on problems like unemployment fall into this category.11 Appeals to the 'class interest'of workers rid of capitalismmake no pretense of appealing to anything in getting more than the individual's advantage, qua member of the working class. Marx'sanalyses of unemployment and crises can have practical import if members of the working class understand them and relate them to their interests. Second, if one accepts Marx'sdescriptionof the workings of capitalism, it is a short step to the conclusion that it is exploitative, degrading, and wasteful. In so describing capitalism, Marx is engaged in something very much like moralcriticism,because he is appealing to his audience's sense of what is and is not acceptablein social institutions.12Such criticismsabound in Marx. The choice of the word 'exploitation' is no accident. And the descriptions of factory life in industrial England enrage as much as they inform. This too is no accident.

they have value, whatever that would be. (Price tags, perhaps?) If 'in their eyes' is not to be construed visually, there is no reason to suppose that it must be construed perceptually at all. 11 Perhaps the labor theory of value is supposed to make a similar point about workers not getting their fair share. I am inclined to be skeptical about this, considering Marx repeated emphasis of the fact that labor, like any other commodity, is exchanged at its value, and his attacks on the Utopian socialists who protest that capitalism is unfair. If the labor theory of value does make such appeals, it is appealing to class interest inasmuch as it is to the advantage of workers to get a larger share of the social product. 12 There has been a wealth of literature recently on the question of whether Marx's criticisms of capitalism can properly be described as moral criticisms. Both sides have mustered persuasive arguments, but the issue should not be blown out of proportion. Most of those who are unwilling to attribute moral arguments to Marx are willing to concede that he did appeal to human aspirations and ideals, though he made no pretensions, and indeed could make no pretensions, to the eternal status of those aspirations and ideals. I call appeals to what seems unacceptable 'very much like moral criticism' in order to avoid embroiling myself in those debates.

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But on Cohen's reading, Marx'sdescription of fetishism is neither of these kinds of criticism. Ratherit is a third form, more epistemic than moral: Capitalismcreates a false image of itself. This motif can be found throughoutMarx'swork. His views about the role of ideology in the maintenance of exploitative and wasteful social structures provide more than strategicadvice about the need to overcome ideological barriers. There is a clear, albeit hard to articulate,sense in which it is a bad thing if a social institution or entire society can only survive so long as those participatingin it fail to understand it. When Columbus first arrivedin America,he is supposed to have convinced the inhabitants to replenish his depleted supplies by convincing them that he had supernaturalpowers. Columbus knew from his navigator that a total eclipse of the sun was expected the following day, and he announced that he would display his powers by temporarilyputting out the sun. When the sky blackened-as Columbus expected, but the natives did not -he told them that he would permanently blacken it unless they did his bidding. After the 'demonstration,'the illusion of his superior powers formed a crucialpart of the basis of the pillage of the island. It could serve this role only so long as it remained an illusion. There are at least three components to our readiness to condemn this sort of thing. First,if there is some agent or group within the society that deliberatelyfosters illusions in order to protect its privileged status, the illusion is objectionablebecause it is manipulative. Marx sometimes adopts this mode of criticism,especially in his more cynical moments as when, speaking of the medieval fiefdom, he remarks, The tithe to be renderedthe priestis more matterof factthan his blessing' (82). This is a moral criticismof an epistemic error. But even if nobody plans the illusion, if, for example, some prophet noticed a pattern to the occurrenceof eclipses, and took it as a sign from the gods about how to organize society, it is objectionablefor a very similarreason: the agents involved are not properly in control of theirlives, because they are acquiescingto social arrangementsthat they would not accept if properlyinformed. It is plausible to suppose that a person is in control of his or her life insofar as he or she was well informed about his or her situation when formulatinghis or her goals.13Nothing close to perfect knowledge about one's social situation is attainablein practice,but complete informationis nonetheless an important regulative ideal. The further the conditions in which

13 Steven Lukes has drawn out the implications of this intuition in his analysis of political power. See Power: a Radical View (London: Macmillan 1974).

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persons choose are from that ideal, the less control they have over their lives. When a systematic pattern of illusion prevails, it is clearly objectionable on these grounds. There is also a third component to our condemnation of social structures resting on illusions. Even if the belief that the sun was under the control of some supernatural being made no significant difference to the lives of those who believed it, it still seems objectionable. A major current in Western thought, beginning with the parable of the cave in Plato's Republic,takes error to be objectionable in its own right, over and above whatever practical consequences it might have for the agent. This mode of criticism is central to a thinker whose influence on Marx's thought was direct: Hegel. Hegel's philosophy of history treats history as the progressive development of human self-consciousness. That development has its lowest point in the ancient Orient, where the people working the land are so unaware of how they differ from the rest of nature that they are unable to distinguish the cyclic natural of the changing seasons from the cyclic nature of the tax-collector's visits. The highest point in self consciousness's journey comes with the modern world and its recognition of itself as a uniquely human product. The reason that Hegel regards the entire pattern of development as progressive is that it leads up to the realization of a particular ideal -complete self understanding. One should not be surprised to find a similar mode of criticism in Marx. Marx took himself to have righted Hegel, whom he found standing on his head. This suggests a fourth mode of criticism that Marx may have engaged in. For Hegel, knowledge is the fundamental mode of interaction between persons and their world. For the Enlightenment, knowledge is the precondition of successful interaction, while for Hegel it is at bottom exhaustive of all interaction. In his first Thesis on Feuerbach, Marx rejects both of these views as too simplistic:
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism- that of Feuerbach includedis that the thing, reality, sensuousness is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation,but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialism, was developed by idealism -but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such.14

Materialism and idealism make the same mistake. Materialists -Marx is thinking especially of the French Enlightenment and the St. Simonians of his day- hold that the world creates representations in pas-

14 Marx 'Theses on Feuerbach/ 421

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sive receptacles.Idealism, while stressing the active side of our creation of representationsof the world, fails to get beyond the existence of representations.The respect in which the two views are alike is disclosed by their agreementabout the most serious failing:misrepresentation of one's situation. For the idealism of Hegel, it is the error of failing to recognize one's culture as a human product. For the materialism of Feuerbach,it is bowing down before one's own mental product. Both are agreed that human success or failure is to be assessed at the level of thought. Ratherthan following materialismand idealism in inquiringinto the possibility of knowledge, Marxis implicitly asking a question that is more general and more basic: how is it possible to be at home in the world?Marx'sanswer, as the first Thesissuggests, is in terms of pracIt ticalactivityin specificsocialcircumstances. is possible to know one's way around in the world because the world is the product of human practicalactivity. ForMarx,human activitiesare priorto understanding.Thereare two ways in which people interact with the world: natural interactions, made appropriateand necessary by naturalconditions, and social interactions,made necessary and appropriateby social institutions. The first of these depends on relationsbetween things, the second on relationsbetween people. If knowledgeis thoughtof as the primarymode of human interactionwith the world, a possible dimension for criticism of social systems presents itself: how knowledgeable or error prone are people in that social system? But if activityis consideredprimary, a ratherdifferent mode of criticismbecomes possible. Mistaking human institutions for naturalforces is the failing associated with the virtueof knowledge. Fetishism-being confrontedby a relationbetween people as by a relationbetween things -is the failing associated with practicalinvolvement in the world. IV Marxis not concerned with relations between things per se but with the relations in which people stand to them. The important feature between things'is thatit operatesindepenof what Marxcallsa 'relation dently of the will of any individual. The weather provides a clear example here; however much we might talk about it, and even know about it, there is nothing anyone can do about it. That is perhaps too strong: meteorologists can predict the weather, and ordinarypeople can cope with it by cancellingpicnics, building shelters, or moving to more favorableclimates. Techniqueslike cloud-seeding have made it possible to shape the weather itself at least somewhat to our ends. But

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for all that, our relation to the weather remains severely limited. At best, we can recognize particularregularitiesin its inexorableworkings and exploit that very inexorabilityto our advantage. We do not shape the weather to our will, but adapt our actions to its parameters. To understandthe contrastingnotion of a 'relationbetween people/ consider language. Throughouthis writings, Marxcomparesproduction to language. The parallelis illuminatingin a numberof ways. Both are essentially social. In a number of places, Marx dismisses the notion of production by an isolated individual as on a par with a language spoken only in isolation.Eitheris possible, but only parasitically on their normal social form.15Both are social in the same way, inasmuch as each depends on a peculiarsort of reciprocityamong speakers or producers.Speakersof the same language tacitlyrecognizeeach other as bound by the same norms of word use and inference. Each and claims. Linguisticrespongrantsthe others a set of responsibilities each must use words correctsibilities are relatively straightforward; ly, make correct inferences, and cleave to canons of conversational by appropriateness saying mostly things that they hold to be both true and relevant. The norms of a language need not be explicitly recognized by the speakers of the language. Indeed, they seldom are. But the possibilityof languagerests on speakersconformingto sharedrules, and correctingeach other when these rules are misapplied. Any mode of production rests on reciprocity in a similar way. is 'Reciprocity' perhaps an unfortunateterm; any mode of production rests on standard and accepted modes of reciprocal interaction. Producersimplicitly-by theiractions- granteach othervariousresponsibilities in production and claims on the product. The distributionof work among the agents in an economy, and the use to which the surplus will be put, whether reinvestmentfor growth or the maintenance of religious or intellectualcastes, depends on the granting of various powers to various people. Marx refers to the distributionof powers and responsibilities the 'socialrelationsof production.'He introduces as
the term in Wage Labourand Capital:
In the process of production, human beings work not only upon nature but upon one another. They produce only by working together and reciprocally exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite relations with one another, and only with those social connections and relations does their relation upon nature operate, i.e., does production take place. ... Capital is also a social relation of production.16

15 For example, in the Grundrisse(the rough draft of Capital, trans. Martin Nicolous [London: Penguin and New Left Books 1973]) 490. 16 Karl Marx, WageLaborAnd Capital (New York: International Publishers 1933) 28

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There is a crucial difference, of course, in that reciprocity in production is seldom egalitarian in the way that linguistic responsibility typically is. The medieval serf has responsibilities in production, and claims on its result, but the lord and curate have only claims.17 Marx would perhaps make a similar claim about the relation of wage labor and capital in capitalism.18 In production, as in language, people interact by recognizing each other's claims. This is obvious in the case of the feudal manor: economic relations take the form of personal relations. In capitalist society, it is less apparent. In a capitalist economy, the most important social institution is the market, which governs the allocation of virtually every resource, including labor power. The labor contract rests on the worker granting to his employer the right to appropriate the entire product in return for his wages. Without the implicit granting of this right- if, as Marx hopes, workers were to refuse to give up control of their products, and instead demanded collective control for themselvescapitalist society could not survive. At this level, the labor market is clearly a relation between people. But in another way it is radically different from any ordinary relation between people. In the Grundrisse, Marx observes:
The social character of activity, as well as the social form of the product, and the share of individuals in production here appear as something alien and objective, confronting individuals, not as their relation to one another, but as their subordination to relations which subsist independetly of them and which arise out of collisions between mutually indifferent individuals. The general exchange of activities and product, which has become a vital condition for each individual their mutual interconnection -here appears as something alien to them, autonomous, as a thing. In exchange value, the social connection between persons is transformed into a social relation between things.19

17 Language may also involve differentiated roles. Hilary Putnam has argued that linguistic roles are not always equal, and has even chosen the phrase 'Linguistic division of labor' to characterize the manner of the inequality. See The Meaning of //Meaning/// in Mind, Language,and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975). 18 This difference must not be confused with a different distinction: language is to the advantage of all of its speakers, but other relations between people need not be. Under normal circumstances, any way of organizing production is advantageous when contrasted with the alternative of no production at all, just as any language at all is advantageous when contrasted with silence. But the advantage of language per se does not entail that all languages are interchangeable in their expressive resources. By the same token -and this is Marx's point -not all ways of organizing production are alike. The difference that concerns us is that linguistic interaction does not typically depend on strongly differentiated roles. 19 Marx, Grundrisse, 157

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Each individual faces the labor market in just the way an individual faces the weather. The marketsets parameterswithin which one must operate. And the only way to turn those parametersto one's advantage is the same as the only way to turn the weather to one's advantage- by exploiting their very inexorability.The individual can only attain his or her ends by ensuring that his or her labor power is marketable,by makingherself or himself availableand useful. Market forecast services even function like weather forecast services, advising investors about how best to maximize their opportunities. If fetishism is thought of as a practicalproblem, we can also see that Marx'scontrastingexampleswould be able to escape the fetish. Robinson Crusoe is free of the practicalproblem of fetishism: he does not stand in any relations to other people. All of his productive activities are directed solely at nature, and so there is no room for him to be confrontedby anything but relationsbetween things. The case of the medieval serf is more complicated. His relation to the social institutions he participatesin is in some ways like this relationto nature;the metaphor of 'naturalplaces' looms large in feudal ideology and life. But the work that the serf does for his lord is done because it is what he is supposed do. Unlike planting in the spring, which he must do to in orderto harvest,workingin the corveeor paying the tithe is grounded in his recognition of the lord's claim. We can also see why Marxwould regard this problem as inseparable from the production of commodities. Unlike other systems of production, there is no limit to the usable surplus which can be produced in a capitalisteconomy. Once the serf has produced enough to feed the lord and his variousretainers,there is no sociallysanctioned use for further production in the feudal manor. The capitalistcan always use surplus, though, both because it is exchangeable for consumption goods, and because there is normallyopportunityto invest it. Capitalistsociety has an inherent impetus towards accumulation. of Accordingto Marx,this impetusis the precondition capitalist production, because it providesthe basis for allocation.Investmentsare made, innovations introduced, and the size of production-runsdetermined on the basis of profitability.Because the economy is organized in this way, it constantlyfeeds on itself and becomeslike a naturalforcewhich individuals have no choice but to adapt to. As Marxobserves in the Manifesto the Communist of Party,The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.'20
20 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifestoof the CommunistParty (New York: International Publishers 1948) 12

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One might wonder, though, whether fetishism so characterizedis a serious ground on which to objectto marketsociety. In Emile,Rousseau suggested that the ideal society is precisely the one in which relations between persons assume the form of natural relations, for it is only in such a society that no person stands in a relation of direct dependence on another.21 Following Rousseau'scue, many of capitalism's staunchest defenders claim that the principlevirtue of the market is that no individual need defer to any other except in virtue of having freely contractedto do so. As Adam Smith observes, 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regardto their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.'22 Unlike slavery or serfdom, each person in capitalistsociety is free to take advantage of the laws of the marketas far as his ability and determination lead him to. Thatis what makes the example of Robinson Crusoe so appealingto capitalism'sself-image:each individualneed only consult his personal advantage in dealing with a system of naturallaws, even if those laws are themselves in an importantsese a human product. If it is a 'fetish'to face the marketthe way one faces a naturalforce, Marx owes us an account of why it is a bad fetish. That account occupies large portions of Marx'scorpus. Its central theme, which reveals why the commodity fetish is on a par with religious fetishism, is that dependence is no less dependence for the absences of an identifiableindividualto be depended upon. It is true that no individualstands in a relationof dependence on any other, insofar as the options of all are limited by the market.To have one's activities entirely shaped by forces that are the result of human practicesis to be enslaved, not merely limited in one's options. There is, according to Marx, a crucial difference between the way an isolated individual is confronted by the laws of meteorology and the way she is confronted by the laws of the market. In ordinarycircumstances, there are a number of general strategies one might pursue in dealing with a natural force like the weather: accepting it passively, adapting one's goals to it, or avoiding it. But when a hurricane strikes, the situation changes. The range of alternativesnarrows to the point where the weather dictates one's activity. Because labor power is a commodity, those in the majoritywho come to the market

21 Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books 1979) 85 22 Adam Smith 'An Early Draft of the Wealthof Nations/ in William Scott, ed., Adam Smith as Student and Professor(Glasgow: Glasgow University Press 1937) 340

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with no other resourcesto sell are faced with a similarlynarrowranging of options: one must make oneself marketableand once sold, directone's activityto whateverone's employerdemands.The employer's options are broaderbut still limited: On pain of bankruptcy,this demand can only take a single form: produce what is profitable.Thus the commodity fetish is not merely a matter of being confronted by a relation between things, but of becoming one of the things. fetish would generatesomeIt should also be clearhow this practical thing ratherlike the epistemic fetishism that Cohen emphasizes: The best way to succeed in capitalistsociety is to think of economic interactions as interactionsbetween individual agents and naturalforces. It is not surprising that technical works in economics shoud present their subject matter like a natural science, and that popular conceptions be in accord with this view. Nor is it surprising that the view that markets are natural processes constantly reasserts itself even if corrected:a system that behaves as a naturalforce will be thought of as one.23Mistakingsocial relations for naturalones is a real mistake. But it is a manifestation of a deeper problem. The parallelbetween religious fetishism and commodity fetishism should now be clear. Religion arises at the level of thought; so does the religious fetish, when people are ruled by the products of their minds. Commodity production takes place at the level of practice;so does the commodity fetish, when people are ruled by the products of their hands. Religion is inseperable from religious fetishism because at bottom the institution and the fetish are identical. Commodity production and commodity fetishism are inseparablebecause at bottom the marketand the fetish areidentical.The more the marketbrings In natureunder human control,the less it is itself controllable: a word, it creates a world after its own image.'24
ReceivedJune, 1986

23 Because the epistemic problem of fetishism is derivative of the practical fetish, Marx avoides the charge that his attribution of 'false consciousness' (a term Marx himself does not employ) is self-refuting because he lacks a privileged perspective to issue it from. If capitalist society mysteriously produced illusions about its workings, Marx would have no grounds for claiming he was not likewise deluded. But Marx does not claim that class society necessarily generates error; indeed he praises David Ricardo for working conscientiously and very nearly figuring out capitalism's workings. Those who mistake capitalism for a natural system are not blindedby their situation; Marx presumes that his explanation of its working will be accepted on empirical grounds. The fact that nobody had developed Marx's analysis of capitalism before Marx did is not an indictment of capitalism. The indictment is that capitalism works the way Marx says it does. 24 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 13