this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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can somebody ELI5 commodity fetishism (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by AlbigensianGhoul@lemmygrad.ml to c/communism101@lemmygrad.ml
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This is something I never really understood in itself or why it's important in the first place. Modern day examples would definitely help.

Can somebody help me out?

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[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Short read: https://redsails.org/commodity-fetishism/

Commodity fetishism describes the objective fact that in capitalism we don’t generally relate to each other as humans asking each other to do things, but rather indirectly command each other through commodities. If I go to a restaurant, I don’t beg the cook to make me a meal and the waiter to deliver it, nor do I imperiously threaten them with violence, nor do I cajole them into it. I just buy the meal. The meal itself then appears to command them to move, like a little god! And I in turn must similarly follow the commands of commodities in order to acquire the money to purchase such meals. This is how the factory comes to want to be used, and how the tropical fruit comes to want to find its way to Stockholm.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 year ago

This is it.

Said more simply, commodity fetishism is the name of the phenomenon of people turning literally everything into a commodity for sale. Twitch streamers streaming themselves playing video games is an example. Jars of farts and used underwear are examples.

I think the word choice is easy to misunderstand. It's essentially the fetishization of the commodity form, not the fetishization of individual commodities.

It's that phenomenon of your mom saying "you're so good at that, maybe you could sell it", or of deciding your sex partner is so hot you should make money selling sex tapes, or of thinking your cat is so cute that you could probably monetize it.