Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 14:39:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lautre Nom <lautrenom-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: AUT: Alienation vs Reification


I don't speak any german, so I can't speak about
Marx's choice of words or translation.  

Outside of Marxist circles, in political economy
alienation often refers to separating an object,
especially land from the community, for private
possession.  Sometimes, this use is reminiscent of
Marx's concept of primitive accumulation (see writing
by Innis or Veblen for instance).  Alienation
generally has this meaning of making something alien
to oneself.  This idea probably sounds quaint to the
modern ear, since the idea of individuality is so
entrenched that identification of ourselves with the
world around us seems out of date.  But it should be
remembered that in pre-capitalist societies, the idea
of the self was much more organically linked to the
world then our own. 

Marx gave alienation a braodened significance in his
1844 manuscripts as Michael pointed out.  He argued
that capitalism is alienating in 4 ways: The worker is
separated from control over the product; from the
process of production; from the herself (since her
alienatated labour is an essential element of being);
and finally classes are separated from eachother,
dividing the community against itself.  If I remember
correctly, he took this broadened use of alienation
over from christian theology, in which the debate was
how Man had become alienated from God.  

A later concept Marx developed, commodity fetishism
was also borrowed from the critique of religion, and
applied to economic phenomena.  In fact, Marx uses
much of the same imagery and metaphors in both the
passage in Capital and that in 1844.  We often confuse
human relations for relations between things in
religious matters. For example by worshiping a
"fetish," or constructed idol, we confuse our
relationship with the thing with our relations to
other people.  Likewise, when we ascribe value to a
commodity, we forget that value is a social catagory
linking us with the productive community.  In a sense,
this is the correlate of Marx's concept of alienation,
since, as alienated workers, we are predisposed to not
recognise our connections to other workers.  The fact
that commodity production is alienated means that we
cannot see our selves in the products we produce, and
so tend to fetishise them. 

Lukacs concept of reification takes over from Marx's
concept of Marx's commodity fetishism and seeks to
explain how the commodity structure of the economy
affects the ideology of the proletariat.  Because we
experience use values as objects of exchange, and even
our own being as labour power is a commodity we must
alienate to sustain our existence, reification, the
mistaking of social relations for things becomes the
norm.  What this tends to mean is that we mistake the
social order as a thing which is outside our power to
control.  Only through systematic efforts will workers
disabuse themselves of the notion of their own
powerlessness.  Lucacs was interested in why workers
do not see their immediate interests in revolt and
uses reification as an explanation.  Marx uses
alienation to show that workers, and even capitalists,
do have an extended interest in overthrowing the
system.

I hope this is of some use. 

Also, nate, I did a quick google search and found the
following link that might be interesting for you:

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/ope-l/2000m03/msg00154.htm

[OPE-L:2607] Re: Searching for "fetish" and "alienat*"
in *Capital*, Vol. 1



Z wrote in [OPE-L:2606]:

> I did a search of *Capital*, Vol. 1.  "Fetish" and
"fetishism" ONLY
> appears in that ONE 12-page section of Chapter 1
(other than in Chapter 3,
> "the hoarder, therefore, makes a sacrifice of the
lusts of the flesh to
> his gold fetish").

Does "Results of the Immediate Process of Production"
count?  See, e.g.
pp. 982-983 , 1003, 1046 in Penguin edition of Volume
1. "Alienation" is
also a subject that is discussed in the "Resultate",
e.g. p. 990. 

[NB: Two German words "Entfremdung" and "Verausserung"
(with an umlaut
over the "a") are evidently rendered into English as
"alienation". The
latter seems to concern "alienation by sale"].

Back to fetishism: And why limit ourselves to Volume
1? What about Volume
3, e.g. Ch. 24 ("Interest-Bearing Capital as the
Superficial form of the
Capital Relation") and Ch. 48 ("The Trinity Formula")?
If you say that
Vol. 1 was published after the drafts for what became
Volume 3 were
written, you would be correct. However, note the
reference to fetishism
in the drafts for  what became Volume 2 (p. 303,
Penguin ed.) which was
written after the publication of Volume 1.

In any event, a word search is a poor substitute for
reading the context
to discover the role of fetishism and alienation since
there are places
where it should be obvious to us what Marx is talking
about (e.g. p. 982,
V1), but wouldn't be picked-up by the "word search"
since the *words*  
"fetishism" or "alienation" aren't used there. Word
searches by computer
are fast and easy, to be sure, but they have severe
limitations and can
not substitute for a scholarly and critical reading of
the text. I think
you understand this limitation, but it is worth noting
anyway.

In solidarity, Jerry



--- Nate Holdren <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com> wrote: >
Michael's question reminded me of some more
> terminological questions I've 
> been meaning to pose to the list.
> 
> First, what's the German for alienation and for
> reification?
> 
> Second ... I'm poking around a little here and there
> in the Grundrisse and 
> I'm trying to parse out the meaning of some terms.
> Marx quotes Steuart, "A 
> common standard in the price of anything presupposes
> its frequent and 
> familiar alienation" (Vintage edition, p192-193).
> Steuart wrote in English, 
> correct? The connotation in this passage (and I
> assume in Steuart) is 
> alienation meaning simply 'sale' rather than the
> more complicated hegelian 
> one. How does this version of the term alienation
> translate into German? 
> Then on p196 Marx says "Appropriation through and by
> means of divestiture 
> [Entausserung] and alienation [Verausserung] is the
> fundamental condition" 
> of commodity circulation. What meaning of alienation
> is this?
> Thanks.
> 
> Nate
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >From: Michael Handelman <mhandelman1-AT-yahoo.com>
> >Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> >To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> >Subject: AUT: Alienation vs Reification
> >Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 08:36:43 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> >I know that Lukacs coined the term "reification"
> >(which he based it upon Weber's notion of
> >"rationalization"), before the discovery of the
> >Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, but
> is
> >there actually any difference between alienation
> and
> >reification?
> >
> >They are both referring to how we have agency but
> we
> >project this agency onto something else (e.g. God,
> >commodities, money, state etc).
> >
> >====> >"Economic freedom would mean freedom from the
> economy - from being 
> >controlled by economic forces and relationships;
> freedom from the daily 
> >struggle for existence, from earning a living.
> Political freedom would mean 
> >liberation of the individuals from politics over
> which they have no 
> >control. Similarly, intellectual freedom would mean
> the restoration of 
> >individual thought now absorbed by mass
> communication and indoctrination, 
> >abolition of "public opinion" together with its
> makers." Herbert Marcuse
> >
> >__________________________________
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> >
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