File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 271


Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 21:31:43 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <Furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Shoes and spiritual reality


Hugh wrote:
>Yoshie quotes Carrol's piece on Milton:
>
>> The cobbler in bourgeois society makes shoes not to wear them (and hence
>>his >own relaity is not analogically present in his visible action) but on
>>the faith or >calculation that through sale he will realize their exchange
>>value--a purely spiritual >attribute not detectable by an examination of
>>the shoes' material reality. (172)
>
>I wouldn't call exchange value "spiritual" reality, let alone "purely"
>spiritual. It's an invisible *social* reality. The amount of socially
>necessary labour embodied in a commodity is an indissoluble part of it,
>accompanies it as its most important aspect (its why the  thing was
>produced in the first place, and why its use value, its necessary
>precondition, is enhanced and nursed to market) as long as the social nexus
>of production, ownership, market and sale is intact. The keeping intact of
>these invisible relations of production is the force of gravity that holds
>a mode of production together. Very real, very material, but so constant,
>so omnipresent, so strong and so determinant of what we do and see that we
>require a great effort of analysis and imagination to realize it's there in
>the first place. As opposed to gravity, however, value is a material social
>force, and hence open to material social change, which gives those who best
>understand it a good chance of changing society for the better.
>
>As for not being "detectable by an examination of the shoes' material
>reality", this depends entirely on how you define a shoe's material
>reality, doesn't it? It's a ferocious act of mutilation (abstraction gone
>berserk) to chop away its whole history of planning, production, sale,
>social role and disposal and just imagine that a shoe is nothing but the
>leather, plastic and glue it's made of. No socially organized labour, no
>shoe. And socially organized labour is a material reality, as Nike's
>workers know far too well, at least as real as the lash of the
>slavedriver's whip.

Let's not create a difference where none exists. You and Carrol and I
probably have differences among us, but not here. Carrol's use of the words
"spiritual attribute" simply makes reference to Marx's analysis of
commodity fetishism. Through that reference, we might also consider a link
between commodity fetishism and the fetishistic character of bourgeois
individualism.

Marx wrote of 'The Fetishism Of Commodities':

'A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily
understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing
abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it
is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we
consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of
satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the
product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by
his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in
such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance,
is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table
continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it
steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It
not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other
commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain
grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than "table-turning" ever was."

Similarly, one might consider the manner in which "abstractly free
individuals" of bourgeois individualism take on "metaphysical subtleties
and theological niceties."

Yoshie




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