Holloway and fetish

[Philip Ferguson <PLF13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis wrote:

> Holloway uses the term in its Marxist sense, which he describes as a
> "central category" in Capital even though "it is almost completely ignored
> by those who regard themselves as Marxist economists".


Thanks for a fine critique of Holloway, who seems to have regressed
substantially since some very good work he did on the state in the 1970s
(see, for instance, John Holloway and Sol Picciotto, eds, 'State and
capital: a Marxist debate', London, Edward Arnold, 1978).

I'm not sure, however, that Holloway does use the term "fetish" in its
Marxist sense.  Holloway is right that it is a central category to
'Capital' and that it's largely ignored by 'Marxist economists'.  I
think this is because it is not an economic term, but a demystification
of economics.  'Capital', after all, is not an economics book - it is a
*critique of political economy*, political economy at the time being the
primary discipline through which the bourgeoisie attempted to understand
the world.

While Holloway seems to primarily link Marx's notion of fetishism, or
more accurately, commodity fetishism, to alienation, this is not how
Marx uses the term.  Commodity fetishism is the process by which the
surface appearances of capitalism come to be seen as the actual way the
system exists and works.  Marx's entire project in 'Capital', by
contrast, is about penetrating beneath the surface appearances to the
inner workings of the system, a project which necessarily shows how the
surface appearances of capitalism, while being created by its inner
workings and being real, are not just mirror reflections of its inner
workings, but highly distorted reflections which simultaneously mystify
the inner workings of the system.

Commodity fetishism is the basis for Marx's explanation of *bourgeois
ideology*, not his explanation of alienation.  Marx notes that all
bourgeois ideology is based on the surface appearances of capitalism.
This means that while it is quite shallow, it is not simply made up.
Because it is based on the surface appearances, it also has a resonance
in society as a whole.  Bourgeois ideology 'makes sense' to people
precisely because it is based on the surface appearances and these are
what most people meet in their daily lives.

There is a 10-page section specifically on commodity fetishism near the
start of the first volume of 'Capital' - the very placing of which
suggests the importance of the concept - and also some fantastic
passages towards the end of vol 3.

This is a much richer and more profound analysis of bourgeois ideology
than the crude idea often propounded on the left, even the 'Marxist'
left, that bourgeois ideology is simply made up and then drummed into
people by a capitalist-owned media.  (This latter explanation of
bourgeois ideology, at base a crude economistic analysis, is fairly
insulting to workers because it assumes them to be empty vessels.)

There are a few very good things around about commodity fetishism - see,
for instance, the Bolshevik economist, I.I. Rubin, 'Essays on Marx's
Theory of Value', Detroit, Black and Red Press, 1972, which also
contains an excellent introduction by Fredy Pearlman which is centred on
the concept; there's also a useful chapter on commodity fetishism in Tom
Kemp, "Marx's 'Capital' Today', London, New Park, 1982.

Perhaps it is Holloway's mistaken understanding of Marx's theory of
fetish that leads him to fetishise the Zapatista experience, taking
certain (true) surface appearances and then sometimes attempting to
generalise them and sometimes taking them as being the new truth.
Holloway falls victim to the same process Marx describes/dissects when
he takes the failure of the post-capitalist state powers that existed in
Eastern Europe and China as indicating that any and every attempt to
take state power must lead to a new tyranny.

The rightward evolution of yesterday's left intellectuals takes many
forms.  The most obvious are those who have become neo-conservatives
(can't think of any off-hand; they seem to be mainly American) and/or
laptop bombadiers like Hitchens.  Then there are those like Debray who
ended up as mere liberals (a trend which also seems to becoming stronger
among the old NLR brigade like Robin Blackburn).  Another fairly obvious
bunch are those who have become postmodernists.

Now we have another wave, certainly influenced by postmodernism, like
Hardt, Negri, Holloway and others.  People like Negri and Holloway,
whatever might have been wrong with their politics in the past, did once
understand the necessity of overthrowing the capitalist state.  Their
abandonment of this, however they dress it up, is a shift to the right
and the abandonment of any really liberatory politics.  Unless the
oppressed take power, abolish class society and thus power itself, they
are condemned to remain the oppressed.  The taking of state power, on
the other hand, is the prerequisite for abolishing classes and thus
state power and political power per se (I've just come from a local
Anti-Capitalist Alliance study on the 'Communist Manifesto' and at the
end of the second part of the Manifesto, the part on proletarians and
communists, there's a great couple of paragraphs about political power
which could be quoted against Holloway and his extremely undialectical
understanding of power.)

Philip Ferguson