Liu Zhaofeng: How is Marx’s Critique of Fetishism Possible?
In recent years, the theory of Marx’s critique of fetishism has been a hot topic of research in Chinese academic circles, particularly within the field of Marxist philosophy. Scholars have engaged in heated discussions on issues such as Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, the doctrine of money fetishism, the critique of capital fetishism, and the relationship between alienation theory and the doctrine of fetishism. Rich results have been achieved regarding the formation process, specific connotations, theoretical significance, and practical contemporary value of the critique of fetishism, as well as evaluations of research by foreign scholars on this subject. Currently, research on Marx’s theory of the critique of fetishism still has areas in need of improvement: there is a neglect of existing textual research on fetishism and related concepts, and fetishism is still understood in the sense of "worship" [1], which deviates from the clear target of Marx’s critique and narrows the research horizon; there is insufficient attention paid to international academic trends regarding the theory; a lack of rigorous study of Marx’s Capital and its manuscripts; and a lack of mutual engagement between the research findings of Marxist philosophers and political economists. To further deepen the study of the theory of the critique of fetishism, it is necessary to clarify exactly what Marx’s critique points toward and why Marx moved toward a critique of fetishism, and on this basis, explore the objective conditions, modes of thinking, and cognitive mechanisms of fetishistic conceptions.
I. Objective Mystified Properties and Subjective Misrecognition: The Specific Target of Marx’s Critique of Fetishism
Marx’s theory of the critique of fetishism points both to the fetishistic character of commodities, money, and capital, and to fetishistic conceptions. Marx conducted a thorough analysis of the fetishistic character of the commodity, arguing that the mysterious nature of the commodity originates neither from its use-value nor from the content of its value-determinations, but from the commodity form itself. A commodity possesses a dual form: its natural form and its value form. Among these, use-value is the natural form of the commodity, which is not unique to it; it is the value form that is the unique form of the commodity as a commodity.
The illusion inherent in the commodity form undergoes further development in the money form and the capital form. Gold and silver, as physical objects, appear naturally to be money, naturally possessing the attribute of being able to express the value of all other commodities—compared to the commodity fetish, the money fetish is even more dazzling. Money can only be transformed into capital within the relations of wage labor. However, the capitalist mode of production creates the following illusion: that capital is an independent existence capable of achieving self-valorization detached from social relations. The fetishistic character of capital is related not only to commodity production but also to the obscuring of the relation of exploitation—the form of wages masks the distinction between necessary labor and surplus labor, and between paid labor and unpaid labor, making it appear as if all labor is paid labor. Thus, the relationship between the capitalist and the wage laborer appears to be an exchange of equivalents, where a relationship of exploitation and being exploited does not exist.
Commodities, money, and capital possess a fetishistic character, and once people’s minds are confused by this character, corresponding fetishistic conceptions arise. For example, some believe that exchange-value is an attribute of the object, while use-value is an attribute of the human being. In reality, use-value is an attribute a thing possesses simply as a thing, whereas exchange-value is a social attribute—a social-formative determination—that the thing acquires within the relations of commodity production and exchange. The Monetarists [2] believed that gold and silver are money by nature, and that money is the sole form of wealth. Marx argued that the Monetarist "illusion" arose from a failure to see that gold and silver, as money, represent a social relation of production, except that this relation takes on a "natural-material form." In the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, Marx pointed out: "The economists who consider the social relations of production of men and the determinations which the things obtain under these relations as the natural properties of the things—this crude materialism is an equally crude idealism, even a fetishism, which attributes to things social relations as their inherent determinations and thus mystifies them." The determination a thing acquires within certain social relations is a social-formative determination, not a natural property of the thing. Attributing social-formative determinations to the natural properties of things is a form of fetishism.
The approach of treating fetishism as a kind of "worship" (chongbai) has existed in academic circles for a long time. In 1923, Chen Duxiu stated in his lecture "On the Problem of Socialism": "Capitalists blindly increase their products—that is, 'commodities'; their supra-rational worship of the omnipotence of 'commodities' is like the religion of African natives blindly worshipping various exotic objects, which is why Marx called it 'commodity fetishism'." In the 1930s, scholars such as Chen Baoyin, Shen Zhiyuan, and Li Da all understood commodity fetishism (commodity fetish-ism) as people’s "worship" of commodities. Even today, the phenomenon of understanding fetishism as a form of worship still exists. In fact, a fetishistic conception, as a specific kind of misrecognition (cuoren), is not equivalent to the worship of objects or social relations. More importantly, analyzing a misrecognition requires explaining why and how A is misrecognized as B, whereas explaining a "worship" only requires pointing out that the object being "worshipped" is a "mysterious thing/event/relation" to the "worshipper."
In the book For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, the French scholar Baudrillard, following the logic of psychoanalysis, understood Marx’s concept of fetishism in the sense of "fetishism" (wulian) [3]. He believed that "Marx used the concepts of commodity fetishism and money fetishism to describe the ideology of capitalist society, which is a mystified, fascinating psychological mode of subjection." In reality, the fetishism Marx critiqued differs significantly from the "fetishism" (lianwupi) [4] of the psychoanalytic school: Marx discussed the social constitution and consequences of fetishism from the logic of commodity production, while the psychoanalytic school discusses the psychological mechanism and effects of fetishism from the operation of the subject's desire. Marx’s focus was on how things acquire a mysterious character, whereas the psychoanalytic school focuses on why humans develop an inexhaustible obsession with things. Baudrillard overlooked the essential difference in research perspectives between Marx and the psychoanalytic school.
Marx’s critique of fetishism points both to the fetishistic character of commodities, money, and capital, and to fetishistic conceptions. The fetishistic character is an objective mystified property, closely related to the "reification of social relations," the "reification of social production determinations," and the "independence of the relations of production from the agents of production." Fetishistic conceptions are neither worship nor psychological fetishism, but a specific kind of misrecognition—treating the formative determinations that things acquire within certain social relations as natural properties of those things.
II. Toward the Critique of Fetishism: An Inherent Requirement of the Logic of Historical Materialism
Chinese academic circles have explored the generation and development of the theory of the critique of fetishism, but have not yet fully revealed the inherent logic between the critique of fetishism and historical materialism, particularly lacking a systematic demonstration of the necessity of Marx’s move toward the critique of fetishism.
During Marx’s time at the Rheinische Zeitung (Rheinische Zeitung), discussions on practical issues such as the debates on the "Law on Thefts of Wood" [5] made Marx encounter the difficult task of expressing opinions on material interests. A conflict arose between Marx’s original "rationalist faith" and the realistic logic he discovered where material interests play a decisive role, which became an important turning point for the transformation of his thought. Through his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, Marx reached the following conclusion: family and civil society are the prerequisites for the state, yet Hegel’s philosophy of right inverted this. In the "Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right", Marx explicitly defined his primary task as the exposure and critique of secular alienation and the exposure of self-alienation in its unholy forms. The demand to give up illusions about the condition of the people is the demand to give up a condition that requires illusions; "once the holy form of human self-alienation has been unmasked, the task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, is to unmask self-alienation in its unholy forms." Marx pointed out in the Theses on Feuerbach that although Feuerbach worked to "resolve the religious world into its secular basis," the formation of the religious world "can only be explained by the cleavage and self-contradictoriness of this secular basis." Therefore, "the latter must, itself, first be understood in its contradiction and then, by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionized in practice." Thus, Marx's thought moved toward the analysis of the self-contradiction of the secular basis.
Analyzing the self-contradiction of the secular basis meant moving out of the "pure realm of thought" and toward "changing the world." In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote in a mocking tone: "As the German ideologists tell us, Germany has in the last few years gone through an unparalleled revolution... This was a revolution besides which the French Revolution was mere child’s play; a world struggle besides which the struggles of the Diadochi [6] appear insignificant... All this is supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure thought." Marx and Engels believed that the Young Hegelians only conducted theoretical critique in the "realm of pure thought." Despite their mouthed phrases supposedly "shattering the world," they were the greatest conservatives, because this demand to change consciousness is merely a demand to interpret what exists in another way—that is, to recognize it by means of another interpretation. "Simply at war with 'phrases,' they are in no way combating the real existing world." Opposing phrases with phrases and recognizing the existing world by means of another interpretation is precisely what Marx critiqued in the Theses on Feuerbach as "merely interpreting the world in different ways." Unlike the Young Hegelians, Marx stepped out of the "realm of pure thought" and committed himself to "changing the world." Marx and Engels examined a question that "none of these philosophers has even thought of asking"—"the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings." Through this examination, Marx and Engels established the materialist conception of history and reached the following conclusion: "All forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism... but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug;... not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory." This is the meaning expressed by Marx and Engels’ assertion that "real liberation can be achieved only in the real world and by real means," and that "'liberation' is a historical and not a mental act." To conduct a detailed theoretical analysis of the inherent contradictions of the secular basis, and to carry out the practical transformation of this secular basis in the real world using real means—this is where the true essence of Marx’s "changing the world" position lies.
Marx, committed to "changing the world," inevitably moved toward the critique of political economy and the critical analysis of the capitalist mode of production. Even while writing The German Ideology, Marx and Engels had developed the following theoretical self-awareness: "starting out from the material production of life itself to set forth the real process of production... understanding civil society as the basis of all history... and explaining all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, such as religion, philosophy, ethics, etc., from the basis of civil society... not explaining practice from the idea but explaining the formation of ideas from material practice." Civil society is the basis of all history, and the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy. Engels made a similar statement in Anti-Dühring: "The ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch." This requires shifting the focus of research to the analysis of the capitalist mode of production and the relations of production and exchange corresponding to it.
The capitalist mode of production possesses a fetishistic character, which requires the theory of the critique of fetishism to reveal the secrets of this mode of production. We can illustrate this through a comparative analysis of corvée labor and wage labor. Marx pointed out that...
"Under corvée labor[7], the labor of the corvée worker for themselves and their forced labor for the landowner are palpably separated in space and time... under wage labor, even surplus labor or unpaid labor appears as paid labor." Because the corvée worker's necessary labor for themselves and their surplus labor for the landowner are clearly distinct, exploitation in feudal society is self-evident; however, the wage laborer's work for the capitalist also appears as their own labor, meaning the capitalist's exploitation of the wage laborer is concealed by the illusion of equal exchange. To expose the secret of capitalist exploitation, we must break through the interference of various illusions. This is where the theory of the critique of fetishism enters the stage. From this, it is clear that moving toward a critique of fetishism is an inherent requirement of the logic of historical materialism.
III. The Generalization of Commodity Production: The Objective Conditions for the Critique of Fetishism
In the first chapter of Volume I of Capital, Marx points out: "As soon as products of labor are produced as commodities, they take on a fetishistic character; therefore, fetishism is inseparable from commodity production." That "fetishism is inseparable from commodity production" means that without commodity production, there would be no fetishism. Commodity production did not exist from the very beginning, nor will it exist eternally—and the same is true of fetishism. Fetishism already existed in simple commodity production[8]; it did not only appear upon the arrival of capitalist society. However, the conditions for the existence of the phenomenon of fetishism are not the same thing as the conditions for revealing the secret of its fetishistic nature. To clarify this issue, it is necessary for us to briefly review the developmental history of human labor and the history of human cognition of labor, as well as the developmental history of human commodity production and the history of human cognition of commodity production.
Labor persists throughout the entire process of human social development. However, prior to capitalist society, people from generation to generation engaged in a specific form of labor, such as agricultural labor; at the capitalist stage of development, labor attains full development, such that individuals can easily move from one kind of labor to another, and no specific concrete labor remains the labor that dominates all others. Labor—rather than a specific kind of labor—becomes "the means of creating wealth in general." This is the history of the development of human labor.
People once recognized the productivity of labor only in certain specific forms. For example, the Physiocrats[9] believed that agricultural labor was the only wealth-creating labor and the only productive labor. Later, Adam Smith cast aside all specific determinations of wealth-creating activity and viewed labor as wealth-creating activity in general; humanity thus realized an "equal regard for all types of labor," and labor, or labor in general, became the "starting point of modern economics." This is the history of human cognition of labor.
Commodity production already existed in slave and feudal societies, but it remained in a subordinate position; "only on the basis of capitalist production does the commodity actually become the general elemental form of wealth"; "once production based on wage labor is generalized, commodity production must necessarily become the general form of production." With the generalization of commodity production, all commodity production gradually transforms into capitalist commodity production; only in capitalist society does the commodity become the dominant form of wealth. This is the history of the development of human commodity production.
Marx argued that the reason Aristotle "failed to see from the form of value itself that, in the form of commodity values, all labor is expressed as equivalent human labor and consequently as labor of equal significance" was because "Greek society was founded upon slave labor and thus had as its natural basis the inequality of men and of their labor powers." This lack of a concept of value hindered Aristotle's further analysis of commodity exchange. "The secret of the expression of value, namely, that all kinds of labor are equal and equivalent because, and so far as, they are human labor in general," can only be revealed in a society where "the commodity-form has become the general form of the product of labor, and that, consequently, the relation of men to one another as possessors of commodities has become the dominant social relation." That is to say, under conditions of simple commodity production, it is impossible to reveal the "secret of the expression of value"; it can only be revealed at the advanced stage of commodity production—capitalist commodity production. This is the history of human cognition of commodity production.
Only in capitalist society—where labor, rather than a specific kind of labor, becomes the means of creating wealth in general—can humanity realize an equal regard for all types of labor; only when the commodity becomes the dominant form of wealth can humanity reveal the secret of the expression of value. In capitalist society, human labor and commodity production both achieved unprecedented development, and human cognition of labor and commodity production reached unprecedented heights. This is the determining effect of the development of socio-economic conditions on economic thought.
The conditions for the existence of commodity production and the conditions for the generalization of commodity production are different from the conditions for revealing the secret of the expression of value. The expression of value existed before capitalist society, but it only became generalized within it; labor appearing as value occurred before capitalism, but humanity could only reveal the secret of the expression of value within capitalist society; all commodity production possesses a fetishistic character, but the secret of that fetishistic character can only be revealed under the conditions of capitalist commodity production.
Under the capitalist mode of production, commodity production is generalized, providing the objective conditions to demystify the fetishistic character, while simultaneously presenting the possibility of the mind being captured by fetishistic concepts. Therefore, it is necessary to explore what kind of thinking Marx employed to make the critique of fetishism possible.
IV. Historical Consciousness and the Distinction Between Material Elements and Social Forms: The Mode of Thinking in the Critique of Fetishism
Basing ourselves on the mature theory of the critique of fetishism from the period of Capital and its manuscripts, and reviewing the intellectual journey of Marx’s turn toward the critique of fetishism, it is not difficult to find that clearly distinguishing between material elements and social forms, while upholding historical consciousness, are the necessary prerequisites for constructing the theory of the critique of fetishism.
In his letter to Annenkov, Marx wrote a profound passage: "Men never relinquish what they have won, but this does not mean that they never relinquish the social form in which they have acquired certain productive forces. On the contrary. In order that they may not be deprived of the result attained, and forfeit the fruits of civilization, they are obliged, from the moment when their mode of commerce no longer corresponds to the productive forces acquired, to change all their traditional social forms... the economic forms in which men produce, consume and exchange are transitory and historical. With the acquisition of new productive forces, men change their mode of production and with the mode of production all the economic relations which are merely the necessary relations of this particular mode of production." Two core ideas in this passage merit attention: first, the distinction between "productive forces" and "the social form in which they have acquired certain productive forces"; second, the clear historical transience of social forms, economic forms, modes of production, and economic relations—though people never relinquish the productive forces they have acquired, they will change all inherited social forms, modes of production, and economic relations, all of which are "transitory and historical forms." Social forms are "historical forms" acquired within specific relations. Regarding this, Marx explicitly pointed out in Wage Labour and Capital: "A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton-spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relationships, it is no more capital than gold in itself is money, or sugar the price of sugar." Slaves, capital, money, and price are all social forms; they are social forms possessed only within certain relations. Divorced from those relations, a Black person is not a slave, a spinning machine is not capital, gold is not money, and sugar has no price.
Distinguishing between material elements and social forms and possessing historical consciousness are necessary for constructing the theory of the critique of fetishism, but they are not sufficient. Constructing this theory requires a thorough dissection of the fetishistic nature of capital and a systematic critique of the fetishistic concepts of bourgeois economists. This necessitates grasping the specificity of the value-form, the money-form, and the capital-form.
In Capital, Marx begins his narrative and analysis with the commodity. The commodity is a contradictory unity of use-value and exchange-value. Marx pointed out: "It is not enough to reduce the commodity to 'labor'; it must be reduced to labor in its twofold form: on the one hand, as concrete labor expressed in the use-value of the commodity, and on the other hand, as socially necessary labor calculated as exchange-value." Based on this, Marx used the transition of the dual character of labor to explain the two factors of the commodity: labor as abstract labor forms the value of the commodity; labor as concrete labor produces the use-value of the commodity. However, abstract labor as the substance of value cannot explain the difference between a "non-commodity" product of labor and a commodity. The real difference between the two lies in the fact that "private labor only manifests itself as a part of the total labor of society through the relations which the act of exchange establishes between the products, and, through their mediation, between the producers." Private labor producing commodities is not directly "part of the total social labor"; it can only prove itself as such through exchange. The abstract labor crystallized in a commodity is not measured directly by labor-time, but must be expressed by a certain quantity of the use-value of another commodity—the value-form is the roundabout form of expression for abstract labor. Not only that, but Marx also raised a question that previous political economy had never posed: "Why labor is represented by the value of its product and labor-time by the magnitude of that value?" This highlights the specificity and historicity of the value-form—not all labor is expressed as value. For example, in the dark European Middle Ages, neither corvée nor tithes in kind took on a phantom form different from their actual existence; the social relations of people in labor did not wear the disguise of social relations between things. In a collective society based on common ownership of the means of production, producers do not exchange their products, and labor does not appear as the value of the products of labor. By analyzing the specificity and historicity of the value-form, the secret of the fetishistic nature of commodities is revealed.
Regarding the money-form, Marx did "something that bourgeois economy has never even attempted"—he "traced the genesis of this money-form, that is, to trace the development of the expression of value contained in the value-relation of commodities from its simplest, almost imperceptible outline, to the dazzling money-form." By tracing the origin of the money-form and examining the historical development of the exchange process, Marx revealed that money is the necessary product of the further development of the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value contained within the commodity—the internal antithesis between use-value and value manifests as the external antithesis between commodity and money. In this way, Marx conducted a thorough analysis of the fetishistic nature of money.
To reveal the fetishistic nature of capital, it is necessary to dispel many illusions, such as the idea that capital can self-valorize. Focusing on the illusion of self-valorization, Marx constructed the theory of labor-power as a commodity, pointing out its significance as a premise for the valorization of capital—the value created by the use of labor-power is greater than the value of the labor-power itself, the difference being surplus value. He thus demonstrated that valorization occurs within the relationship of exploitation between capital and wage labor. Regarding the illusion brought about by the form of wages—where "every trace of the division of the working day into necessary labor and surplus labor, into paid labor and unpaid labor" is obliterated, such that "all labor appears as paid labor"—Marx revealed how the value and price of labor conceal the value and price of labor-power. Regarding the illusion that surplus value originates in the sphere of circulation, Marx pointed out that the changes occurring in the circulation process (the conversion of commodities into money and money into commodities) belong to a change of form; the labor spent in the circulation process is "merely labor that mediates the change of form of value" and does not create value. Regarding the illusions that commercial profit and interest-bearing capital seem to arise entirely from circulation—where interest-bearing capital appears as an "automaton" or fetish capable of self-valorization, and interest appears "only as a relationship between one capitalist and another" rather than between capitalist and worker, and where ground rent appears as if it "arises from the monopolizable and limited natural forces"—faced with these various illusions of capital...
Interest; Land—Ground Rent; Labor—Wages: referring to this "trinity formula," Marx points out that "value is not produced because it is converted into income; it must already exist before it can be converted into income, before it can assume this form." Value must first be created before it can be divided, and thus before it can be converted into various types of income. Surplus value is created by the surplus labor of wage workers; the process of the conversion and division of surplus value does not increase it by a single penny. Therefore, one must first examine surplus value itself before examining its various concrete converted forms.
Only by understanding this logic can we grasp the profound significance of the comment at the beginning of the "Theories of Surplus Value" in the Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863: "All economists share the error of examining surplus value not purely as such, in its specific forms of profit and ground rent." If one only examines specific forms like profit and rent without examining surplus value itself, it is impossible to know the conditions under which surplus value is converted into profit and rent; it becomes easy to view profit and rent as eternal entities. Marx examined the various concrete forms of the direct production process of capital, the circulation process, and the total process of capitalist production, dispelling the cognitive fog brought about by various illusions. By narrating the production, realization, conversion, and division of surplus value, he revealed the fetishistic character of capital.
To grasp Marx's critique of fetishism, one must pay special attention to his use of terms like "becoming" (成为) and "converting into" (转化为): products of labor become commodities; labor power becomes a commodity; means of production and means of subsistence become capital; labor becomes wage labor. Commodities are converted into money; money is converted into capital; labor is converted into wage labor; surplus value is converted into profit; profit is converted into average profit; a portion of profit is converted into interest; and surplus profit is converted into ground rent; etc. Both "becoming" and "converting into" are conditional; they are realized only within certain social relations and are therefore historical. Expressions like "becoming" and "converting into" embody Marx’s historical consciousness.
From the above, we can see that the unique way of thinking in Marx's critique of fetishism lies in upholding historical consciousness and clearly distinguishing between the material elements and the social forms of the production process, thereby highlighting the specificity and historical transience of the value-form, the money-form, and the capital-form.
V. The Way of Thinking and Class Position Leading to the Confusion of Material Elements and Social Forms: The Cognitive Mechanism of Fetishistic Conceived Notions
In Capital and its manuscripts, Marx analyzed the fetishistic notions of bourgeois economics, specifically conducting a systematic critique of the "trinity formula." We shall use the "trinity formula"—capital—interest, land—ground rent, labor—wages—as an example to analyze the cognitive mechanism behind the formation of fetishistic notions.
Under the capitalist mode of production, capital, land, and labor provide profit, ground rent, and wages annually for the capitalist, the landowner, and the wage worker, respectively, thus forming the incomes of these three different classes. To avoid misunderstanding, it is necessary to savor Marx's following assertion: "Landed property does not create the portion of value which is converted into surplus profit, but merely enables the landowner—the owner of the waterfall—to entice this surplus profit out of the manufacturer's pocket into his own. It is not the cause of the creation of this surplus profit, but the cause of its conversion into the form of ground rent—that is, the cause of the appropriation of this portion of profit or price by the owner of the land or the waterfall." Landed property does not create the portion of value converted into surplus profit; it merely enables its conversion into the form of rent. However, bourgeois economics has its own sophisticated "juggler's trick." John Stuart Mill declared: "The requisites of production, reduced to their most general form, are land, capital, and labor." Land and labor are indeed elements (requisites) of the production process, but capital is not an element of the production process—it is the social form of the production process. In Mill's mind, the material elements of the production process were confused with its social forms. Through this confusion, bourgeois economists proved the identity of labor and wage labor, and of the means of production and capital: labor and wage labor are merged into one, and the specific social form that sets the conditions of labor in opposition to labor is merged into the material existence of the conditions of labor. Means of production appear to be capital by nature, and land appears to be naturally monopolized by a few landowners. Consequently, in the minds of bourgeois economists, the conditions of labor become a genuine source of value, just like labor itself. Furthermore, through this "trick," the eternity of the capitalist mode of production—the idea that capital is an immortal natural element of human production itself and that its existence is an eternal natural law of human production—is "proven."
In addition to the aforementioned confusion between the material elements (means of production, land, labor) and social forms (capital, land monopolized by landowners, wage labor), the "trinity formula" contains the following substantive inversions [10]: first, it confuses the elements of use-value production with the elements of value creation (land is an element of use-value production, not value creation); second, it confuses necessary labor with the social form of necessary labor (necessary labor does not have to take the form of wages, just as surplus labor does not necessarily manifest as surplus value); third, it inverts the relationship between the creation of value and its division (the new value created by wage workers is divided into parts like interest, rent, and wages, rather than these parts constituting the value).
Why is there so much confusion in the minds of bourgeois economists? This is related to their empiricist way of thinking. Capitalist society is full of deceptive illusions. The "actual agents of production" deal with various manifestations of these illusions daily and operate within them. If the observer's way of thinking is empiricist, they will be deceived by these illusions, resulting in misrecognitions such as fetishistic notions. In Capital and its manuscripts, Marx highly praised the great achievements of classical economics. However, even the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo remained more or less imprisoned in the world of illusions. Therefore, they never discovered from the analysis of the commodity that specific value-form which makes value into exchange-value; they sought the factors that determine the magnitude of value, rather than seeking the reason for the existence of value; they did not seek the reason for the existence of surplus value, but only the factors determining its magnitude. Classical economists did not ask, as Marx did, "why labor is represented by value," nor did they examine the conditions for "the conversion of the conditions of labor into capital" and "the conversion of labor into wage labor."
The empiricist way of thinking is even more pronounced among vulgar economists. Marx believed that what vulgar economists did was actually nothing more than taking the notions of the agents of production localized within bourgeois relations of production and interpreting, systematizing, and defending them as dogmas; it was "nothing but a didactic, more or less dogmatic translation of the everyday notions of the actual agents of production, arranging them in a certain rational order." Because of this empiricist way of thinking, the everyday notions of the agents of capitalist production were systematized and theorized by bourgeois economists. As a science, Marx's theory of the critique of fetishism must reject this empiricism and implement a concrete, historical way of thinking. "If the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided, all science would be superfluous." This sentence of Marx's is often interpreted as a general philosophical statement on the relationship between essence and phenomenon. In fact, Marx said this while criticizing the "trinity formula." This assertion by Marx shows that in capitalist society, the essence manifests in an inverted form rather than coinciding directly; the task of science is to reveal the essence of things through the deceptive illusions.
Marx believed there were even deeper reasons for the theoretical limitations of bourgeois economics: "The value-form of the product of labor is the most abstract, but also the most general form of the bourgeois mode of production, which characterizes it as a particular sort of social production of a historical and transitory nature. If then we treat this mode of production as one eternally fixed by nature for every state of society, we necessarily overlook that which is the differentia specifica of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity-form, and of its further developments, money-form, capital-form, etc." Mistaking the capitalist mode of production for the eternal, natural form of social production is where the bourgeois standpoint comes into play. Marx believed that the "trinity formula" serves the interests of the bourgeoisie because it preaches the natural necessity and eternal rationality of the ruling class's sources of income, promoting this view as dogma. By standing on the bourgeois position and employing an empiricist way of thinking, one ignores the specificity of the value-form, money-form, and capital-form, thereby eternalizing the capitalist mode of production and falling into the quagmire of fetishistic notions.
From the above, it can be seen that the "trinity formula" is the concentrated expression of fetishistic notions. The core logic of these notions lies in confusing the material elements of the production process with its social forms, thereby abstracting and eternalizing the capitalist mode of production. The reason bourgeois economics fell into fetishistic notions is related to its empiricist way of thinking, while the bourgeois standpoint it upholds is the deeper cause.
Conclusion
To deepen the study of Marx's theory of the critique of fetishism, we need to clarify what specifically Marx's critique refers to and why he moved toward this critique. On this basis, we must ask and answer questions belonging to "how is Marx’s critique of fetishism possible," such as: "under what objective conditions is the critique of fetishism possible?" "what way of thinking makes the critique of fetishism possible?" and "why did bourgeois economics fall into 'fetishistic notions'?"
Marx's critique of fetishism points both to the fetishistic character of commodities, money, and capital, and to fetishistic notions. In our research, we particularly need to avoid the cognitive error of conflating fetishistic notions with "worship" or "fetishism" (in the sense of a psychological or cult-like obsession). Moving toward the critique of fetishism is an internal requirement of the logic of historical materialism, because only by applying the theory of the critique of fetishism can one reveal the secrets of the capitalist mode of production, which possesses a fetishistic character. Continuing along the path guided by Marx requires us to master and apply the sharp intellectual weapon of his theory of the critique of fetishism.
The conditions for the existence of fetishistic phenomena and the conditions for demystifying their fetishistic character are not the same thing. All commodity production possesses a fetishistic character, but the objective conditions for demystifying this character are only present at the stage of social development where commodity production has become universal. The reason bourgeois economics fell into the quagmire of fetishistic notions is that the bourgeois standpoint and the empiricist way of thinking led it to confuse the material elements and the social forms of the production process. Only by mastering the theoretical weapon of Marx's critique of fetishism and clearly distinguishing between material elements and social forms can we avoid falling into the quagmire of fetishistic notions and maintain a clear historical consciousness when facing the value-form, the money-form, and the capital-form.
Author Biography: Liu Zhaofeng is a Professor at the School of Marxism, Zhejiang University. Source: Marxism Studies (马克思主义研究), Issue 12, 2024. Editor: Huihui