I forgot to add the connection with the Cambodian stock market. The currently-dominant neoliberal ideology in the US, at the IMF and World Bank, etc. involves megadoses of commodity fetishism. As such, it doesn't just worship markets and commodity production but also the most rarified of commodity exchange, the speculative trading of monetary assets for each other. Thus, the establishment of a stock market in an "emerging market" economy is a talisman of success. (It really doesn't matter if the vast majority benefit from this success.) Neoliberalism isn't the same thing as commodity fetishism, but it is highly influenced by comm. fet.
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 6:08 AM, Carrol Cox <[email protected]> wrote: >> 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. > > to my mind, purely fetishism in Marx isn't purely subjective or purely > objective (but is extremely different from consumerism). > > On the subjective level, it's a matter of what an individual sees "on > the surface" when examining a commodity-producing society from the > inside: it looks as if it's commodities and the exchanges of one for > another that rule society; it looks as if people and their activity > don't form the basis for society and its reproduction over time. > > On the objective level, in a pure commodity producing society > commodities _do_ rule society. Our activity only "counts" (as value, > as "valuable") to the extent that we produce commodities that can be > sold. As it says in the old marketing slogan (of IBM??), "it's not > creative unless it sells." > > It seems to me that a commodity-producing society is most likely to be > reproduced over time if theory and practice work together, in sync, > which seems more likely to the extent that it is pure commodity > production. Of course, it isn't. > -- > Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own > way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. > -- 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
