An Unwarranted Expansion of Commodity Fetishism: Snodgrass on Marx

In the paper, A Tale of Goddesses, Money, and Other Terribly Wonderful Things: Spirit Possession, Commodity Fetishism, and the Narrative of Capitalism in Rajasthan, India, author and anthropologist Jeffrey G. Snodgrass finds that the application of Marxist theory to real life events is not always simple. The problem for Snodgrass lies in the narrowness of the Karl Marx’s definition of commodity fetishism. In an attempt to still use the definition, Snodgrass makes an argument for the expansion of the definition that enables the term to be used to explain actual accounts of fetishiation as seen in a real community in India. I argue that Snodgrass’ use of the commodity fetish takes Marx’s definition of the term out of solely deification of an object into one that includes demonization as well as deification of words and stories thereby showing that fetishizization can encompass much more than Marx foresaw. However in his broadening of the definition, Snodgrass moves too much away from Marx’s original idea and so wrongly uses the term to describe instances that would not fall under the commodity fetishism.

In Karl Marx’s writings, he focuses some of his work on the subject of the material and how material objects can come to rule over a person. Material objects, as seen by Marx, come to hold too much emphasis and power in a capitalist economy. Capitalism calls for obtaining the most money while spending as little as possible to achieve this goal. This mass production often leads to a power being given to money which leaves the laborer that produces the object in a powerless position. Snodgrass communicates Marx’s views in his paper pointing out “that persons inhabiting or entering a capitalist economy may come to perceive the fruit...

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...viewed as cases of selfishness for ones own views over another person and not what Marx had in mind because he thought of commodity fetishism as the lifting of an object over the importance of another person.

Although Jeffrey Snodgrass does use ethnographic evidence to ground his argument into the real world, he fails to adequately argue that the expansion of Karl Marx’s commodity fetishism is warranted. Ultimately, the author is working with a different type of fetishism that pertains to placing a group of people over the interests of another. In Marx’s definition, an object is placed above a person instead of a person or group which is why the fetishizing is so abhorrent. The core of commodity fetishism lies in a person being pushed aside for a mere object that should not have more importance than a human life and so Snodgrass’ expansion is not an acceptable one.