1. Explain Marx’s concept of ‘species-being’- how does alienation work in the capitalist system?
2. What is ‘commodity fetishism’ and how does it work in contemporary culture of consumerism
Answers:
1. According to Lowe (2020), “For Marx, whether capitalism and its class-division is a suitable
arrangement for human beings depends on human nature. Because humans are biological beings,
and not merely free-floating immaterial minds, we, like all other biological beings, must interact
with and transform the natural world in order to survive. But what distinguishes us from all other
animals, like bees, spiders, or beavers, which all transform the world based on instinct, is that we
transform the world consciously and freely. Thus, the essence of a human being – what Marx calls
our species- being – is to consciously and freely transform the world in order to meet our needs”.
Marx used the concept of “species-being” to respond to the question, “what is human nature?”
Self-realization is achieved by our active connection with the world through labor. Human history is
the process of reuniting man’s “existence” and his “essence”. It is through work or production that
allows the expression of our creative energies and reveals our human potentials. Your existence is
entwined with your essence, hence your life will not be as meaningful as it is without creative work.
One is alienated if his existence somehow does not reflect his self-actualization or essence.
“Alienation (or estrangement) means, for Marx, that man does not experience himself as the acting
agent in his grasp of the world, but that the world (nature, others, and he himself) remain alien to
him. They stand above and against him as objects, even though they may be objects of his own
creation. Alienation is essentially experiencing the world and oneself passively, receptively, as the
subject separated from the object” (Racolta, 2018). “Labor is alienated because the work was not
included in the worker’s nature anymore, and does not fulfill but denies himself in his work and
does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally
debased” (Fromm, 1961).
2. Commodity fetishism refers to Marx’s analysis of the commodity to the society as a whole. Marx
said that commodity lies in a contrasting dual state; one that is physical and one that emphasize
social material interaction. In capitalism, even the complex social relations is not defined by people,
but by the commodities. We might be able to tell a number of things about a commodity when we
look at it. We can describe it physically, but unless it was made clear to us we would not be able to
know where and by whom the commodity was made. This is an important part of the commodity.
The creation of the commodity, for example, a t-shirt, required the employment of a worker to
process raw cotton and to stitch it all together or extended social relations like those between the
factory owner and the worker and even the social relations between the buyer and all the workers
who made the product whose names and identities you probably do not and cannot know and that
is the big reveal. It is called commodity fetishism.
2. What is ‘commodity fetishism’ and how does it work in contemporary culture of consumerism
Answers:
1. According to Lowe (2020), “For Marx, whether capitalism and its class-division is a suitable
arrangement for human beings depends on human nature. Because humans are biological beings,
and not merely free-floating immaterial minds, we, like all other biological beings, must interact
with and transform the natural world in order to survive. But what distinguishes us from all other
animals, like bees, spiders, or beavers, which all transform the world based on instinct, is that we
transform the world consciously and freely. Thus, the essence of a human being – what Marx calls
our species- being – is to consciously and freely transform the world in order to meet our needs”.
Marx used the concept of “species-being” to respond to the question, “what is human nature?”
Self-realization is achieved by our active connection with the world through labor. Human history is
the process of reuniting man’s “existence” and his “essence”. It is through work or production that
allows the expression of our creative energies and reveals our human potentials. Your existence is
entwined with your essence, hence your life will not be as meaningful as it is without creative work.
One is alienated if his existence somehow does not reflect his self-actualization or essence.
“Alienation (or estrangement) means, for Marx, that man does not experience himself as the acting
agent in his grasp of the world, but that the world (nature, others, and he himself) remain alien to
him. They stand above and against him as objects, even though they may be objects of his own
creation. Alienation is essentially experiencing the world and oneself passively, receptively, as the
subject separated from the object” (Racolta, 2018). “Labor is alienated because the work was not
included in the worker’s nature anymore, and does not fulfill but denies himself in his work and
does not develop freely his mental and physical energies but is physically exhausted and mentally
debased” (Fromm, 1961).
2. Commodity fetishism refers to Marx’s analysis of the commodity to the society as a whole. Marx
said that commodity lies in a contrasting dual state; one that is physical and one that emphasize
social material interaction. In capitalism, even the complex social relations is not defined by people,
but by the commodities. We might be able to tell a number of things about a commodity when we
look at it. We can describe it physically, but unless it was made clear to us we would not be able to
know where and by whom the commodity was made. This is an important part of the commodity.
The creation of the commodity, for example, a t-shirt, required the employment of a worker to
process raw cotton and to stitch it all together or extended social relations like those between the
factory owner and the worker and even the social relations between the buyer and all the workers
who made the product whose names and identities you probably do not and cannot know and that
is the big reveal. It is called commodity fetishism.
