This touches on a matter I was somewhat lazily thinking of this morning. Marx tried two different labels for the social relations capitalist commodity exchange generates: alienation (early work) and commodity fetishism (later work). Both I think were unfortunate choices. They name or are intended to name an objective feature of the capitalist world, NOT ways of thinking about or responding to that world. Yet the 'dictionary' sense of both terms is completely subjective. The fetishism Jim writes of here belongs, as he notes, to ideology; to the way in which neoliberals think. And I have seen users on this list andthe marxism list use "commodity fetishism" in a subjective sense, meaning too much emphasis by a consumer on the commodities he/she can buy. That is a perfectly good English use of the phrase; it has no relationship whatever to Marx's use. And there has just been a long thread on lbo in which "alienation" was used in a rather mystical sense, but still linked (vaguely) to what capitalism does to people.
Too bad Marx didn't select terms that had such useful non-Marxist meanings. Carrol On 7/11/2011 8:40 AM, Jim Devine wrote: > The New York Times > July 10, 2011 > Shares Needed as Cambodia Gets a Stock Exchange > By SIMON MARKS > > PHNOM PENH — Having experienced more than a decade of economic growth > after years of civil unrest and political disorder, Cambodia is set to > open its stock market Monday, a move the government hopes will attract > more investors to this country’s small and developing economy. > > But there is a stumbling block: Cambodia has no companies that are > ready to go public. > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/business/global/shares-needed-as-cambodia-gets-a-stock-exchange.html > > why the neoliberal fetish that each country "needs" a stock market? > the word "fetish" answers the question. > -- > Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own > way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
