Exchange Value and Commodity Fetishism

The world as it is today and even as it was in the past has always been constructed and influenced by society. As one looks back throughout history, human beings have always been part of society as a whole, which therefore means that the idea of the individual has strongly depended upon it. This controversial issue is put forward by Marx, who says that human beings think that they exist as free individuals, that they are “free” from the so called social world, but it is in actual fact society in itself that generates that belief (Gundrisse: pp.84). What one would take for granted as concrete fact is really just a concentration of social forces, which inadvertently means that one cannot take any observation as the truth. All in all, Marx indicates that that everything- even ones values- are influenced by society and the entity that frames our values entirely is capital. In this essay I will focus on this assumption put forward by Marx, how objects have moved from having not only a use value but an exchange value as well, as well as its relationship to “commodity fetishism”.

When Marx talks about exchange value, he is referring about the value one places on a commodity. The concept of exchange value is very different to the concept of use value, the use value is “the object of the satisfaction of any system whatever of human needs” (Gundrisse: pp.881). Exchange value goes a lot further than that: in this case, something with a use value becomes transformed into a commodity, which is ultimately a social product. Therefore exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent from use value. The �value’ of an object changes in terms of how much it costs, and what intrinsic value it bestows upon a person eg status. A person thus no longer purchases an object that is only useful to them, but it has a value attached to it that goes further than the mere gratification of mans so called basic needs. An example of this is clothing. People no longer buy clothing merely keep warm or to cover up, but rather clothing has gained a value that goes far beyond that- one can purchase a variety of clothing that adds to ones meaning and existence, that one can use to define oneself and the people they surround themselves with. Clothing does not just have a use anymore, but rather it has become more about the exchange. What can be bought and sold for intrinsic value is lost, it is rather more based on what the commodity is worth This means that exchange has become a value in itself which gains meaning in a capitalist society, needs have been and will always change over time, thus different things gain commodity value.

According to Marx, exchange value is very closely linked to his concept of commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism is a term coined by Marx that explains the relationship man has with commodities. As stated previously, when goods are produced, their value is not set by how useful they are, but rather by their ability to be exchanged for other things. This then implies then that the labour that has gone into the creation of that product is not valued for its usefulness, but rather by its ability to generate exchange. So a persons labour thus ultimately becomes a commodity in itself, an aspect of their humanity is subjected to be bought and sold. Different kinds of labour come to be connected because they can be exchanged for the same amount of merchandise. So, when one takes a look at the economy at the end of the day, one does not see relationships between people, but rather a relationship between things.

To elaborate on this concept, one has to focus on labour. Human labour is what ultimately produces the commodity, which is then ultimately sold. Does that not essentially mean that it is in actual fact human labour that is being sold? Labour is, at the end of the day, strictly social. When labour in a society is bought and sold, it loses its fundamental creativity. One does not really see the labour, one sees the object- the people and the labour seem to disappear. The price of an object is what projects the objects true worth, in other words, the object is the price. The labour that has gone into making that object disappears from view as well as the people whose labour went into making the object. All that is left is the price tag.

This process creates a very extreme sense of alienation. All the different forms of labour ultimately loses its unique quality, Marx states that in a capitalist society, people view a variety of different forms of labour as equivalent (Capital: pp.71-72). Take for example a waitress and an au pair. Both forms of labour are in fact unique from each other, they require different skills and levels of creativity, but in today’s society these two forms of labour are seem as equivalent. We don’t view an object as valuable because of how much work it took in