[Marxism] Mystification?

[Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ed George:

> Now, maybe it is because I am stupid, but I can see 
> nothing other than mystification here.

"A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply
because in it the social character of men?s labour
appears to them as an objective character stamped upon
the product of that labour; because the relation of
the producers to the sum total of their own labour is
presented to them as a social relation, existing not
between themselves, but between the products of their
labour. This is the reason why the products of labour
become commodities, social things whose qualities are
at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the
senses. In the same way the light from an object is
perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of
our optic nerve, but as the objective form of
something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of
seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of
light from one thing to another, from the external
object to the eye. There is a physical relation
between physical things. But it is different with
commodities. There, the existence of the things quâ
commodities, and the value relation between the
products of labour which stamps them as commodities,
have absolutely no connection with their physical
properties and with the material relations arising
therefrom. There it is a definite social relation
between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the
fantastic form of a relation between things. In order,
therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse
to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world.
In that world the productions of the human brain
appear as independent beings endowed with life, and
entering into relation both with one another and the
human race. So it is in the world of commodities with
the products of men?s hands. This I call the Fetishism
which attaches itself to the products of labour, so
soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is
therefore inseparable from the production of
commodities."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4




      
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