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Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century pp 25–45Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Marx and Commodity Fetishism: Some Remarks on Method

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Abstract

The chapter deals with the status of the theory of fetishism in Marx’s critique of political economy. It seems that Marx has grasped fully the significance of commodity fetishism only in preparing the second German edition of Capital (1872), where he gives a systematic exposition of it. One has to distinguish the moments of critique and dialectics in Marx. The analysis of capitalism and its fetishistic illusions is the job of the critique, whereas dialectics is used in the presentation of the results of the analytic investigation. The passage of fetishism in Capital is thus not a part of the dialectical exposition, but rather formulates the presuppositions of it, since it shows the illusions against which an adequate theory of capitalism has to be developed and its concepts justified.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This work is, together with further introductory texts by Heinrich, now available even in English: An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital, trans. by Alexander Locascio, Monthly Review Press, 2012.

  2. 2.

    MEGA II/5 Text, *26: ”… [d]i.e. Entwicklung der Theorie des Warenfetischismus begleitete den gesamten Herausbildungsprozess der ökonomischen Theorie von Marx von Anbeginn und war daher auch untrennbarer Bestandteil seiner Kritik der bürgerlichen Ökonomie”.

  3. 3.

    Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart 1993, vol. 37, 389 sqq. Engel’s edition gives here faithfully the text of Marx’s original manuscript (cf. MEGA II/15, 381 sqq.). Marx’s expression “begriffslose Form” is, however, rendered into English in the Collected Works edition as “meaningless form.”

  4. 4.

    Loc. cit.; in original: “Das gesellschaftliche Verhältnis ist vollendet als Verhältnis eines Dings, des Geldes, zu sich selbst”.

  5. 5.

    MEW vol. 25, 838; Collected Works, vol. 37, 817; cf. MEGA II/4 Text, 852 sqq.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.—Marx’s original German expressions—“die verzauberte, verkehrte und auf den Kopf gestellte Welt”—again remind us of the Feuerbachian critique of religion as a camera obscura picture of reality.

  7. 7.

    The expression “interest-bearing capital” (das zinsttragende Kapital) is an anachronism when we are speaking of pre-capitalist conditions. Marx of course did not mean here capital in its modern sense, but the money which the moneylender borrowed for interest.

  8. 8.

    MEW vol. 25, 839, Collected Works, vol. 37, 818.

  9. 9.

    Speaking of a “final touch” is of course always very relative when applied to Marx and his way of working. But it might be noted, however, that in the three lists of emendations to be done for a planned (and not realised in Marx’s lifetime) third German edition of Capital and to an American edition (likewise not realised), all from 1877, Marx does not propose any changes to the fetishism passages of the second German edition (see MEGA II/8 Text, 7 sqq., 21 sqq., 25 sqq.).

  10. 10.

    See MEGA II/5 Text, 626–649. The impetus for writing the appendix came obviously from Ludwig Kugelmann, who, having seen the manuscript, had hoped a more popular exposition of the difficult dialectics of value-form. Marx mentions this in his letter to Kugelmann of 13 July 1867. But already 16 June, Engels, too, had insisted that a more lucid survey of the development of value-form was needed, so that even a “Philister” could grasp it.

  11. 11.

    MEGA II/5 Text, 634 (Marx, Das Kapital, Hamburg 1867, 771): “Diese Verkehrung, wodurch das Sinnlich-Konkrete nur als Erscheinungsform des Abstrakt-Allgemeinen, nicht das Abstrakt-Allgemeine umgekehrt als Eigenschaft des Konkreten gilt, charakterisiert den Werthausdruck”.

  12. 12.

    Marx, Das Kapital, Hamburg 1867, 768: “Als Werthe sind alle Waaren gleichgeltende, durch einander ersetzbare oder vertauschbare Ausdrücke dersleben Einheit. Eine Waare ist daher überhaupt mit anderer Waare austauschbar, sofern sie eine Form besitzt, worin sie als eine Wert erscheint”.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 771.

  14. 14.

    MEGA II/5, 632–634, 637 (Marx, Das Kapital, Hamburg 1867, 769, 770, 771, 773 (rubric)): “Der Fetischismus der Waarenform ist frappanter in der Aequivalentform als in der relativen Werthform…”

  15. 15.

    Marx, Das Kapital, Hamburg 1867, 775.

  16. 16.

    That Marx himself accepted the alternative of presenting his economic theory without the dialectical form is clear from the fact that he edited the Johann Most’s popular exposition Kapital und Arbeit (2nd ed. 1876; republished in MEGA II/8), where the results of Marx’s critique of political economy were simply stated as facts and no attempt at their dialectical deduction was made.

  17. 17.

    MEGA II/6, Text, *28.

  18. 18.

    MEGA II/6, Text, 103.

  19. 19.

    MEGA II/5, 638 (Marx, Das Kapital, Hamburg 1867, 774). My translation.

  20. 20.

    MEGA II/5, 637–638 (Marx, Das Kapital, Hamburg 1867, 774): “Es ist nur das bestimmte gesellschaftliche Verhältniss der Menschen selbst, welches hier für sie die phantasmagorische Form eines Verhältnisses von Dingen annimmt”.

  21. 21.

    For example, in MEW Bd. 23, 168–169: “In der Zirkulation G–W–G funktionieren dagegen beide, Ware und Geld, nur als verschiedene Existenzweisen des Werts selbst, das Geld seine allgemeine, die Ware seine besondre, sozusagen nur verkleidete Existenzweise. Er geht beständig aus der einen Form in die andere über, ohne sich in dieser Bewegung zu verlieren, und verwandelt sich so in ein automatisches Subjekt”. Interestingly, the standard English translation of this passage substitutes “subject” for “active character”: “…It is constantly changing from one form to the other without thereby becoming lost, and thus assumes an automatically active character” (Capital, vol. I, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence and Wishart, vol. 35, 164).

  22. 22.

    Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, vol. 35, 177.

  23. 23.

    Op. cit., loc. cit.

  24. 24.

    Marx, Capital, I, Marx–Engels, Collected Works, vol. 35, 89 (MEGA II/6 Text 109 sqq.)

  25. 25.

    Op. cit., loc. cit.

  26. 26.

    Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform, Freiburg: Ça ira 1997, 258.

  27. 27.

    For example, Marx has, according to Backhaus, not been able, “die Notwendigkeit eines Übergangs vom zweiten zum dritten Abschnitt oder von Substanz zur Form des Werts in keiner Fassung überzeugend darzulegen” (op. cit., 143).

  28. 28.

    Michael Heinrich, Wie das Marxsche Kapital lesen? Stuttgart: Schmetterling Verlag 2008, 202 sqq.

  29. 29.

    Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, vol. 35, 165–166.

  30. 30.

    Op. cit., 166

  31. 31.

    Marx to Lassalle, February 22, 1858; Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, vol. 40, 270.

  32. 32.

    For a good survey of the discussion, see the article Forschung/Darstellung by Veikko Pietilä, in: Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, vol. 4, Hamburg: Argument Verlag 1999, coll. 696–701.

  33. 33.

    “Alle Wissenschaft wäre überflüssig wenn die Erscheinungsform und das Wesen der Dinge unmittelbar zusammenfielen”; Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart 1993, vol. 37, 804.

  34. 34.

    Foreword to the second German edition of Capital, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, vol. 35, 20

  35. 35.

    Marx’s letter to Engels, 1st of February, 1858, in: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence & Wishart, vol. 40, 260.

  36. 36.

    I am here thus of a different opinion from Zelený, who insists that the analysis and synthesis form in Marx an unity, albeit an unity “of a specific art” (Zelený, op. cit., 178). Of course it is possible to discuss the ways in which the analysis and synthesis are connected in Marx, but in every case it is certain that they are not identical, and that the analysis must, according to Marx, precede the synthesis.

  37. 37.

    “die absolute Methode […] verhält sich nicht als äusserliche Reflexion, sondern nimmt das Bestimmte aus ihrem Gegenstande selbst, da sie selbst dessen immanentes Prinzip und Seele ist”; G. W. F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Bd. II, in: Hegel, Hauptwerke in sechs Bänden, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1999, Bd. 4, S. 241.

References

  • References to Marx and Engels in English according to the Marx–Engels, Collected Works, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977 sqq.; for original languages, according to the Marx–Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Berlin 1975 sqq., where Roman numbers give the section (Abteilung), Arabic numbers the volume; each volume is in turn divided into a “Text” part and an “Apparat” part. Some references are to the Marx-Engels, Werke (MEW), Berlin: Dietz Verlag 1956 sqq.

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  1. Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Vesa Oittinen

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  1. Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA

    Marc Silver

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Oittinen, V. (2020). Marx and Commodity Fetishism: Some Remarks on Method. In: Silver, M. (eds) Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13639-0_3

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