The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig - Book Report/Review Example

Taussig and Marxism Taussig and Marx share similar values in that they both criticize capitalism. In Taussig’s view, anthropology which frames the object of study as the cultures, must be directed towards a critique of Western, capitalist culture. Marx’s primary concern was also the intellectual destruction of capitalism. The two major areas in which Taussig applies Marx’s views in his book dealing with the beliefs of the tribes of Colombia and Bolivia is (a) commodity fetishism and (b) the commoditization of the religion of capitalist societies. In his book, “ Taussig sets out the premise of his work as an attempt to interpret what are “to us in the industrialized world the exotic ideas of some rural people in Colombia and Bolivia concerning the meaning of the capitalist relations of production and exchange into which they are daily being drawn.” (Taussig,1983, p 3). Therefore, he sets up the critical vantage point that people in peripheral civilizations have on capitalism and suggests that they may offer valuable insight into western culture. On this basis therefore, it may be noted that Taussig appears to place the primitive people of these peripheral tribes of Bolivia and Colombia in a superior position to observe the western cultures, which in reality are the more primitive because they are based upon the system of capitalism. Marx introduces the concept of commodity fetishism in the introductory chapters of his work “Das Kapital” as a state of social relations which arise in complex capitalist market systems, where such relations are centered upon the value placed by people on commodities. The significance of Marx’s use of the term fetishism in the context of commodities lies in the fact that in Marx’s day, the word was primarily used in the context of primitive religions, therefore Marx’s relegation of commodities to fetishism signifies the primitive nature of the belief system which lies at the heart of modern society. Therefore, it is akin to an illusory role that Marx ascribes to private property which is often at the centre of capitalist systems. Applying this, Marx argues that the work of social relations among people appears to be conditioned not by their interactions, but largely by commodities in the marketplace, since it is the market that appears to decide who should do what for whom. As a result, human relations conditioned by the market become so commercial that people become unaware of their social relations and become alienated from their own social activity, because they are so lost in the dynamics of commodities in the market. In a similar manner, Taussig equates capitalism to demonization of society. In offering an explanation for the meaning of fetishism, Taussig draws upon the views of Mark and states: “Fetishism denotes the attribution of life, autonomy, power and even dominance to otherwise inanimate objects and presupposes the draining of these qualities from the human actors who bestow the attribution. Thus, in the case of commodity fetishism, social relationships are dismembered and appear to dissolve into relationships between mere things.”(Taussig, 1983, p 31-32). In this way, Taussig reiterates Marx’s views on commodity fetishism which proposes a similar dehumanization of human social relations in favor of commodity market dictation of such relations. For instance Taussig applies this concept of commodity fetishism that has been proposed by Marx to the beliefs of some tribes in Colombia, which is also found among tin miners in Bolivia. The belief existing among these tribes is that the proletarianized peasants who are sugar cane cutters actually enter into a contract with the devil which helps them to make a lot of money out of their produce; however the limitation with the gathering of all this money is that it must only be spent on purchasing frivolous consumer goods and the cutter must face an early death. This belief is linked to an underlying recognition by these tribal people that gathering a lot of money and commodities appears to be a productive activity on the outside because it makes a cutter rich, however in reality it only leads to his early death. Similar beliefs about the devil also exist among the Brazilian tin miners and Taussig uses commodity fetishism to explain their behavior, They believe that the devil live sin the mines and will eat them unless they practice devil worship and make offering to him, because he has control over the mines. Marist belief holds that there is a true economic reality which is the genesis of all super structural phenomena, hence culture and human understanding is dependent upon the base economic reality. However Taussig does not ascribe such beliefs to false consciousness among the tribal people, rather he uses commodity fetishism as the basis to link tribal beliefs to the reality of worker exploitation and lack of justice and fairness, which is a part of the economic reality of capitalism. Consumerism is therefore equated with a way of life that is given by the devil, because it is rife with exploitation and injustice. In a similar vein, Marx has also argued that commodity fetishism demonizes human relations and allows some individuals to profit from and exploit others by using commodities as the controlling element. By focusing upon commodities and their use as a medium of exchange, people become so involved in the weights and measures of the commodities that they fail to pay attention to the underlying social relationships governing the exchange, so that the labor involved in generating the goods is valued less than the commodity and the social character of labor comes to be viewed merely as the material relationship between things. (Marx 437-8). He points out how economists therefore fail to see that commodities have no value other than what people ascribe to them, and the sum total of the value of the commodities comes from the people who create them. (Marx 442-443). Taussig also draws upon the views of Marx in the field of religion. In primitive, tribal societies, he, like other anthropologists, points out that religion cannot be viewed in isolation, rather it inevitably functions through linkage with indigenous social and cultural categories. Beliefs existing in such primitive societies in regard to the spirit world are linked with gender, life cycle, status, wealth and ethnicity, and are therefore an integrated part of the social context within which they occur. On this basis, he views these primitive tribes as critical social thinkers, who are able to view capitalism as the evil it is and are not deceived by the outward appearance of productivity linked with commodities. This is similar to Marx’s views. He states that where capitalist societies are concerned, commodities appear to be independent of the people who produce them and appear to have assumed a natural rule-ship over them in accordance with their natural laws. (Marx 442). Since human society is thus reduced to the status of a mere abstraction, Marx states that capitalist, western countries have Christianity as their dominant religion, a religion that reduces an actual human being to an abstract man, and has lost touch with nature because it is lost in commodities. Marx points out that societies which are not dominated to such a great extent by commodities and trade have retained their connection with nature and continue to depend upon it; hence as a part of their religion, they worship nature and retain their connection with her. He states further that economists are able to see the earlier lunacy in treating gold and silver as if they have inherent value and their recognition that these elements have no value other than what humans ascribe to them; however they are unable to extend that knowledge to the question of commodities and see that value is ascribed to commodities only through the labor that people out into them. Taussig also reiterates such Marxian beliefs as he points out the value of the primitive religions which are able to recognize the evil of commodities. In the first instance, their use of the devil as the provider of commodities indicates their recognition of the evil of the capitalist belief in the productivity of commodities. Secondly, he also describes other tribal beliefs associated with money and commodities. According to this belief, for some people obsessed with commodities, a switch occurs so that instead of a baby, a peso is baptized so that it continues to be born again and again. This underlying belief represents the tribal understanding of the dehumanizing nature of money, because the peso appears in a substitution of human life, as a result of which it is the money and greed that continues to propagate rather than human life itself. Therefore, in conclusion, Taussig has applied Marx’s views on commodity fetishism to the tribal people of Bolivia and Cambodia, in reflecting their underlying understanding of the evils of capitalism where the economic realities are such that exploitative relations exist between people, while the value of human and social interactions disassociated from commodities has vanished from capitalistic societies. References: * Marx, Karl. “Selected Writings” (edn David McLellan) * Taussig, Michael, 1983. “Devil and Commodity fetishism in South America”, University of North Carolina Press. Read More