La Cultura y la Mercancía
RESUMEN: Adorno and Horkheimer adopted the notion of the fetishism of commodities for the analysis of art and culture. Material, physical goods are not identical with symbolic ones. In spite of being predominant, the culture industry cannot be taken as the prototype for all analyses of culture. One cannot reduce all cultural products in the market economy to market products. The plurality of artistic and cultural practices found in countries such as Brazil calls into question the Frankfurtian framework.
1. El análisis de la mercancía y su fetiche, hecho por Karl Marx en El capital, es una abstracción de las relaciones de los hombres, que es una relación entre cosas. El análisis de Marx es oriundo de la economía política, pero, no obstante, alcanza el dominio de la filosofía. La mercancía (y su fetiche) es una especie de "mónada" del capitalismo.
¿ De donde viene esa dimensión metafísica que domina el trabajo de los hombres y sus productos? - pregunta Marx. La mercancía no es una mera cosa: no es aquello que aparenta ser. La adherencia de valores externos hace de ella la portadora de "sutileza metafísica y mañas teológicas". (Marx, 1983: p.70) Ese procedimiento no es propio del valor de uso, en la destinación de los productos para la satisfacción de la necesidad de los hombres. Esa adherencia es propia de la forma mercancía misma, en el momento en que el trabajo humano (que es alienado) es dado a la sociedad como mercancía, en el valor de cambio.
El fetiche de la mercancía es la transformación del producto social en una cosa metafísica. La mercancía es resultado de las relaciones objetivas de producción y, en la economía capitalista, alcanza el estatuto de mediación entre los productores: ella refracta la relación social de los hombres como una relación de objetos, o mejor, como una relación objetiva entre cosas. La forma mercancía es la síntesis de la relación social que nace con el trabajo. (Marx, 1983: p.71)
La mercancía sólo alcanza el fetiche gracias a la forma como es producida, o sea, en el trabajo alienado. La racionalidad del proceso de producción provoca la fragmentación y el trabajador es sólo una parte de esa maquinaría, un objeto como otro cualquiera. Una vez producida y dada a la sociedad, la mercancía retiene una unidad de significación que no se encuentra más en el hombre o en la relación de la producción.
Edkins, Jenny, and Maja Zehfuss. Global Politics: A New Introduction. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Marx’s idea of the estrangement of man from the product of his labor described the suffering of countless hours or work by the laborer, contributing to the production of a product that he could not afford with the wages he made. He helped to produce a product that only those wealthier than he could afford. As the society around him became more object-oriented, he became increasingly more alienated. In the lager, one factor that distanced the laborer from his product was that he no longer worked for a wage, but for survival. In a description of his fellow worker, Levi wrote, “He seems to think that his present situation is like outside, where it is honest and logical to work, as well as being of advantage, because according to what everyone says, the more one works the more one earns and eats.” Levi pitied his fellow worker for his naivety, as the Lager was not a place of labor for prosperity, but strictly a place of labor by force. One worked in order to live, focusing more on the uncertainty of their next meal, day, or even breath than the product of their l...
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Before expounding upon these ideas, it is necessary to establish a baseline from which to view these topics. It is important to realize that we as humans view everything from our own cultural perspective. Marx speaks of this saying, "Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class."
Karl Marx looks at human societies as a whole, and asks how they reproduce themselves, and as a result, change. For Marx a fundamental question about any society is whether it can produce more than it needs to reproduce itself, that is, a surplus product. Karl Marx believed that the middle class is based upon economic factors and rooted in solely that perspective. Many people have examined his work closely arguing that economic factors could not possibly be the only definition o...
Much of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto discusses the relationship between how a capitalist society produces its’ goods and how this affects the social structure of the society. Throughout the manifesto, Marx used the term mode of production to refer to how a given society structures its’ economic production, it also refers to how a society produces and with what capital the society produces. Human capital plays a large part in Marx’s communist manifesto, concerning himself with the relations of production, which refers to the relationship between those who own the means of production (bourgeoisie) and those who do not own the fruit of their labor (proletariat). This is where Marx believes that one can find the causes of conflict, asserting history evolves through the mode of production. The constant evolution of the mode of production toward a realization of its’ full potential productivity capacity, creates dissensions between the classes of people, which in capitalism, are defined by the modes of production (owners and workers). Marx believes that one such dissension is that since Capitalism is a mode of production based on private ownership of the means of production, and entities within a capitalistic economy produce property to be exchanged to stay competitive, these entities are forced to drive the wage level for its’ labor as low as possible so as to stay competitive. In turn, the proletariat must create means with which they can keep the interests of the bourgeoisie in check, trying to avoid being exploited to the point of extirpation. Marx holds that this example shows the inherent conflicting nature of the social infrastructure of production, which will in turn give rise to a class struggle culminating in the overthrow ...
According to Marx, the key to understanding the social reality is not found in abstract ideas, but in the factories or in the coal mines, where workers carry out the duties that are beyond the limitations of humanity, to prevent themselves from dying of starvation, in which the unemployed people find dignity as a human being because there is no way aside from it. The capitalist is
Karl Marx’s article titled Estranged Labor as found in his 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts pays significant attention to the political economic system, which is commonly referred to capitalism. He further delves into nature of the political economy with a keen focus on how it has negatively impacted the worker or laborer. Therefore, the laborer forms the subject of his critical and detailed analysis as tries demonstrates the ill nature of the political economy. To start with Karl Marx portrays how the political economy as presented by its proponents has led to emergence of two distinct classes in society; the class of property owners and on the other hand, the class of property less workers. According to Karl Marx (2004), proponents of the political economy have introduced concepts such as private property and competition indicating without providing any form of analytical explanation but rather just expecting the society to embrace and apply such concepts. In particular, political economists have failed to provide a comprehensive explanation for division that has been established between capital and labor. Estranged Labor clearly depicts Marx’s dissatisfaction as well as disapproval towards the political economy indicating that proponents of such a system want the masses to blindly follow it without any form of intellectual or practical explanation. One area that Karl Marx demonstrates his distaste and disappointment in the article is worker or the laborer and how the worker sinks to not just a commodity but rather a wretched commodity (Marx, 2004). This is critical analysis of Karl Marx concept or phenomenon on the alienation of the worker as predicted in Estranged Labor in several aspects and how these concepts are ...
More specifically, social change is a factor of the structural propensity of capitalism to be global and Marx's dialectical method can be used to analyze this as well. For instance, Marx expands on how there is an inevitable social ch...
Commodity fetishism has blinded people into believing that value is a relationship between objects, when in reality, it is a relationship between people. This in turn, prevents people from thinking about the social labor condition workers have to endure; they only care and value about how much objects costs. They think that the source of the value comes from the cost, but it truly comes from labor (FC). Through this objectification stems alienation and estrangement. Marx starts with the assumption that humans have an intrinsic quality. As human beings, individuals like to be create and manipulate his or her environment. Creating is a part of people; therefore, people their being into their creations. However, Marx postulates that capitalism and specialized division of labor separates that working class from their creations in four ways- through alienation from the product, the labor process, one’s species-being, and humanity itself. The working class suffers through this hostility to make create more wealth for owners of factories. They get trapped in a cycle to make products for profit, but as automation advances, machines begins to take over people’s jobs; therefore, there less employment opportunities available, which in turn allows factory owners to decrease wages and exploit and devalue the working class (EL). In the The Poverty
In the Communist Manifesto we see early versions of essential Marxist concepts that Marx would elaborate with more scientific rigor in mature writings such as Das Kapital. Perhaps most important of these concepts is the theory of historical materialism, which states that historical change is driven by collective actors attempting to realize their economic aims, resulting in class struggles in which one economic and political order is replaced by another. One of the central tenets of this theory is that social relationships and political alliances form around relations of production. Relations of production depend on a given society’s mode of production, or the specific economic organization of ownership and division of labor. A person’s actions, attitudes, and outlook on society and his politics, loyalties, and sense of collective belonging all derive from his location in the relations of production. History engages people as political actors whose identities are constituted as exploiter or exploited, who form alliances with others likewise identified, and who act based on these
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The vigorous desire to achieve and willingly attain something holds the capability to greatly affect one's life. William Shakespeare's play Macbeth establishes the immense effect and influence of ambition. After gaining power over his country Scotland, the protagonist, Macbeth, experiences an internal downfall as he battles between his wants and moral judgement. He struggles to maintain stable relationships with others as his selfish desires and goals hurt those around him when achieved. In addition to clashing with himself and others, he is seen as a tyrant leader and is slowly turned against by Scotland's nation as well as England. Shakespeare's play Macbeth provides the reader with a clear understanding of ambition's corrupting power in Shakespeare's tragic character Macbeth, through his inner conflicts, struggle to maintain stable relationships with those surrounding him, and clash with society.
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