Materialized Reality, Social Cognition and Behavioral Logic in the Commodity World: Comparative Analysis of Marx’s and Some Later Researchers’ Critique of Fetishism
Liu Zhaofeng
School of Marxism, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Abstract：In order to deepen the study of the critical theory of fetishism, it is necessary to make a comparative analysis of Marx’s and Lukacs, Baudrillard, Hiromatsu Wataru, Zizek’s related discussions.Marx’s fetishism theory and Lukacs’ critique of reification have different applicable scope and critical direction. Marx believes that all commodity production (not just the capitalist commodity production) has the nature of fetishism, while Lukacs regards commodity fetishism as a unique problem of modern capitalism, thus narrowing the historical period during which Marx’s critique of fetishism applies. Marx limits the object of fetishism criticism to the materialization of social relations under the condition of commodity economy, while Lukacs also incorporates technological progress itself into the critical object of reification theory in History and Class Consciousness.The relationship between people is manifested as the relationship between things, which is the objective social reality, that is, “materialized reality”. In the face of materialized reality, some people can see through (with critical consciousness of reification), while others are trapped (captured by reification consciousness). In the context of Marx’s Das Kapital and its manuscripts, Versachlichung refers to the problem of how social relations express themselves as the form of presentation (which belongs to materialized reality), rather than the cognitive problem of how the parties understand this kind of representation. Hiromatsu Wataru interprets the objective social existence of Versachlichung as people’s misidentification. In fact, there is no difference between “us” as intellectual censors and “them” as parties, the difference lies only in our minds and theirs.In Critique of Symbolic Political Economy, Baudrillard’s criticism of Marx’s fetishism theory, which ignore the essential difference in research perspective between Marx and the Psychoanalytic school, cannot be established. Marx’s criticism of fetishism contains a sober consciousness of historicity, which Baudrillard lacks. Capital fetishism does not come from use value itself, but from the unique social form obtained by use value in capitalist production relations. When Baudrillard uses the concept of use value fetishism, he confuses use value with the use value already in the capitalist relations of production.The objective appearance of the social characteristics of labor and the objective form in which the determination of the magnitude of the values takes place, cannot be eliminated by Marx’s scientific discovery. In other words, even if we see through the real operation of the materialized reality, we cannot make this materialized reality dissolve itself. In the developed stage of commodity economy, people live in reversed relations, not in distorted consciousness. What governs how people act (how to do) is not the theoretical consciousness (know or don’t know) that can be seen through, but the realistic and objective social relations. Based on the inconsistency between knowing and doing, Zizek’s criticism of classical ideological criticism overestimates the degree of people’s consciousness confronted with the false consciousness and misunderstands people’s behavioral logic.Through comparative analysis, we can draw a general conclusion that in terms of the critical study of fetishism, to carefully study Marx’s Das Kapital is the primary work.
刘召峰. 商品世界的物化现实、社会认知与行为逻辑[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2023, 53(10): 5-14.
Liu Zhaofeng. Materialized Reality, Social Cognition and Behavioral Logic in the Commodity World: Comparative Analysis of Marx’s and Some Later Researchers’ Critique of Fetishism. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2023, 53(10): 5-14.
2023, Vol. 53 
