Works of Karl Marx and Georg Simmel - Essay Example

Discuss, compare and contrast Marx's argument about 'commodity fetishism' with Simmel's observation that in modernity we are increasingly experiencing the 'autonomy of objective culture'. The works of Karl Marx and Georg Simmel shows an ambiguous and complicated relationship when it comes to their discourse on the consumption world. It was Marx who has introduced several concepts in regard to issues such as capitalism, modernity, culture and other socio-economic and socio-political arguments. Simmel, writing years after Marx, echoed much of the Marxist themes in his own works and conducted many philosophically and psychologically oriented investigations based on Marx's propositions. For this paper I would be comparing Marx's concept of "commodity fetishism" to Simmel's "autonomy of objective culture." Background The so-called "commodity fetishism," as Marx (1976) tell us, is the fact that a "definite social relation between men themselves' assumes here, for the, the fantastic form of a relation between things, [or] to the producers' the social relations between their private labours appear' as material relations between persons and social relations between things." (p. 165) This concept was conceived wherein humans are the real actors whose social relationality was obscured in the reified commodity form. (Brah & Coombes 2000, p. 116) The concept of "autonomy of objective culture", on the other hand, is Simmel's characterization of the prevalence of monetary relations in modern society. Here, he is suggesting that, paradoxically, it is the fact that money empowers us that accounts for the fragmentation of subjective life and that monetary freedom is abstract and devoid of substance because it becomes alive and valuable only through being incorporated into the substance of real social relations. (Dodd 1999, p. 38) This principle by Simmel is, in a way, an extension of Marx's commodity fetishism to cultural production in line with the idea that objective culture exists in an autonomous realm that follows an immanent developmental logic. Here, the commodity, money and capital - with money as the "consummate fetish" of money making more money - appear in such a way that they are immediately present on the surface of the bourgeois society but their immediate being is pure semblance. (Simmel 200p, p. xxvi) The comparison of the commodity fetishism and autonomy of objective culture is best illustrated in Marx and Simmel's discourse on money, the aesthetic sphere and freedom. On Money A common ground between Marx and Simmel is their extensive discourse on money and its effects on culture. Marx utilized the Shakespearian theme of money in Timon of Athens wherein it was said that money is an unnatural power which converts the morally bad into the morally good, the antisocial becomes social and that the ugly becomes beautiful. In Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, Timon talked about his gold: Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant' Thou common whore of mankind, that putt'st odds Among the rout of nations. (Timon of Athens: Act 4, scene 3) Marx adopted this and elaborated more in his effort to illustrate that money is an alien medium - one that conceals the true value of labor and that it takes upon itself and its possessor qualities that are external to man. To quote: That which money can create for me, that for which I can pay (i.e., what money can buy)- that I, the possessor of the money, am. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. The properties of money are the properties and essential powers of me - its possessor. Thus what I am and what I am capable of is in no way determined by my individuality. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power of repulsion, is destroyed by money. I - according to my individual nature - am lame, but money gives me twenty legs, therefore I am not lame. I am wicked, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid man; but people honour money, and therefore also its possessor. (cited in Kamenka, p. 78) The Marxist perspective suggest that because of money, morality came to be replaced by trust and economic credit and that a person's worth is now judged entirely in terms of his or her capacity to pay. According to him, "money transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are merely abstract conceits and therefore imperfections - into tormenting chimeras - just as it transforms real imperfections into chimeras - essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the imagination of the individual - into real powers and faculties. (p. 168-169) As one would find in his writings, Simmel's work on the subject is strongly influenced by Marx's The Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, which essentially established that money is a representation of the abstract relationships of private property that have become detached from the underlying human relations of exchange. In Simmel's view, money is the very medium that creates a social possibility of value but that it might also be the very medium that destroys it. Here, Simmel compliments the Marxist principle of commodity fetishism in the capitalist society. In categorizing money as the pure instrument of exchange, Simmel was able to refer more to the concept money in modern society, specifically in regard to its potential uses and more than the specific forms of money. The reason for employing such an abstract definition of money, according to Nigel Dodd (1999), becomes clear as soon as one considers the aims which lie behind Simmel's analysis. He promptly cited them as: 1) to examine the conditions and connections of life in general; 2) to uncover the preconditions that, situated in mental states, in social relations and in the logical structure of reality and values, give money its meaning and its practical position. (p. 45) David Frisby argued that Simmel also recognized that the spheres of circulation appear to us an autonomous sphere, "one that seems to be guided by its own laws. Such a self referential system comprising self-referential signifiers points toward a concern with the representational forms of commodities whether it be the ever-new face of commodity creating the external and unstable illusion of modernity in fashion or fashion's co -production of the aesthetic veil or aesthetic attraction of things." P. xxxvii) The significance of the autonomy of the sphere of circulation, exchange and consumption is significant to Simmel because it claims affinity to the autonomy of the sphere of objective culture. In, talking about the general subject of culture, he wrote: The 'fetishistic character' which Marx attributed to economic objects in the epoch of commodity production is only a particularly modified instance of this general fate of the contents of our culture. These contents are subject to a paradox' that they are indeed created by human subjects and are meant for human subjects, but follow an imminent developmental logic' and thereby become alienated from both their origins and their purpose. (p. 70) David Frisby argued that Simmel also recognized that the spheres of circulation appear to us an autonomous sphere, "one that seems to be guided by its own laws. Such a self referential system comprising self-referential signifiers points toward a concern with the representational forms of commodities whether it be the ever-new face of commodity creating the external and unstable illusion of modernity in fashion or fashion's co -production of the aesthetic veil or aesthetic attraction of things." P. xxxvii) The significance of the autonomy of the sphere of circulation, exchange and consumption is significant to Simmel because it claims affinity to the autonomy of the sphere of objective culture. In, talking about the general subject of culture, he wrote: The 'fetishistic character' which Marx attributed to economic objects in the epoch of commodity production is only a particularly modified instance of this general fate of the contents of our culture. These contents are subject to a paradox' that they are indeed created by human subjects and are meant for human subjects, but follow an imminent developmental logic' and thereby become alienated from both their origins and their purpose. (p. 70) Simmel deviates from Marx in the area where he does not seek the so-called 'laws of motion' of the capitalist mode of production in order to illustrate why the phenomenal types of society in the realm of circulation and exchange in the way they appear to us. In addition, Simmel considers money as one that obliterates differences between use of values and a form in which value exists as an autonomous exchange value. For Marx, there is a distinction between a capitalist private property and the property of the immediate producers based on personal labor. Hence, these variables are considered as extensions of human beings. From this point of view, writes Walicki, "it was natural to see the development of the money economy as bringing about the dehumanization of property, the expropriation of direct producers, and the alienation of laborers from their products." For Simmel, it is different. He argued that money is pivotal in making people - owners of property and possessor of money - independent from their possessions, thereby liberating them from the exclusive preoccupation with it. To illustrate: When a person owns a car, it makes him dependent on this possession. Now, if he has money, he is freer to do what he wants. And so it is clear that Marx concentrated on his idea that money represents a universal alienation and the people's enslavement by material things. On the one hand, Simmel focused on illustrating how money or its exchange plays an important role in the achievement of freedom. Freedom Another interesting dimension to the marked difference between Simmel and Marx in regard to their perspectives on money is that the former never argue against the problems that money creates. An interesting idea in Simmel's arguments is that when he focused on forms, he was able to examine an issue from different angles and as a result, he thoughts reflected much about freedom which went against the very advocacy of Marx and the socialists. This is his notable contribution: Simmel tried to forget nothing, forcing us to see money both in positive and negative perspectives. Simmel like Marx have stressed clearly that by making labor a commodity that can be sold and purchased in the market, there is an elimination of pressure of the irrevocable dependency upon a particular master and that there is no necessary connection between liberty and increased well-being which is automatically presupposed by wishes, theories and agitations. (Simmel 2004, p. 300) This is supposedly because "the worker is already on the way to personal freedom despite his objective bondage." Specifically, Marx pointed to the lack of fall-back benefits such as land corps for the workers in a bourgeois-ruled system. Simmels answer to this is simple: "The emancipation of the labourer has to be paid for, as it were, by the emancipation of the employer, that is, by the loss of welfare that the bonded labourer enjoyed." (p. 300) Simmel acknowledged the socialism's positive characteristics, particularly the complete equality which breed a sense of community in people. But he refuses to be drawn to it and still preferred the system of wage labor. For him, the beauty of this system is that enables an individual to separate himself from the necessity of working for a living. To illustrate: A worker goes to the factory, then he is paid so that when he goes back home, his salary can be used to purchase whatever he wants and for whatever purposes. "With wage labor you have the potential to earn what you need,, and in sharp contrast to slavery or feudalism, you have substantial amounts of free time, all of which you can use as you see fit." (Fernandez 2003, p. 127) According to Andrzej Walicki (1997): The main difference between Marx and Simmel, as far as the problem of freedom is concerned, boils down to their different assessments of the role and meaning of reification and human dependence on things in general. Like Marx, Simmel paid much attention to the processes of objectification and reification, but, in contrast to Marx, he treated them as furthering the cause of freedom. (p. 106) The Aesthetic Sphere One must remember that for Marx, the value of goods is determined by the social relations by which they are produced. Then, there's his notion that the presence of the exchange system makes the production inaccessible and misperceived, easily hiding the commodity's real value. What this does is for the good or the commodity to acquire a certain fetish-like power that has nothing to do with its worth. A case in point is the Jogakusei - the Japanese schoolgirls who are recently aesthetic objects of Japanese painting, postcards and photographs. These girls somehow represent the modern Japanese women whose experiential realities were interchangeable with a kind of "reality" that is mediated, imagined and used as consumable forms. The Jogakusei is the same with Marx's wage workers and the commodities they produce. Here, the schoolgirl was fetishized. There is a certain spectacular "publicness" that is not a result of history or material social relations. The Jogakusei is, in effect, an empty icon, representing someone that is other than herself. Meanwhile, the relationship between the culture of things and commodities has taken up a number of Simmel's introspections. For instance, the aesthetic realm for Simmel is one in which reality is presented sub specie aeternitatis, transcending the individual moment, highlighting the relationship between the fragmentary and the totality, the 'pathos of distance' between subject and object, the symmetry and asymmetry of forms, which, for their part, all figure in his exploration of the money economy. (Simmel, p. xxvi) Simmel (1997) also sided with Marx in some respects in this area. For example, he wrote: The 'fetishistic character,' which Marx attributed to economic objects in the epoch of commodity production, is only a particularly modified instance of this general fate of the contents of our culture. These contents are subject to paradox' that they are indeed created by human subjects and are meant for human subjects, but follow an immanent developmental logic' and thereby become alienated from both their origin and their purpose. (p. 70) Conclusion All in all, while Marx and Simmel agree on some things (e.g., money as alienation and rationalization), their views and theories, particularly the former's "commodity of fetishism" and the latter's "autonomy of objective culture" are symmetrically contrasting each other. Their analysis jive in regard to the transition from personal dependence to objective dependence but that their value judgments and their discourse and conclusions on freedom are markedly distinct from each other. Marx sees money as evil, that it inevitably becomes an instrument of oppression. His treatment of money and commodity value may be worth an extended criticism, one cannot deny that he has valid arguments as well. Simmel, on the other hand, posited that money and its abstraction frees a person from the restrictions of social allegiances, making the arguments lead towards the broader but relevant issues of political, social and economic liberation. It appears that Simmel, if he would still be alive, would settle for the appropriate existing economic assumptions about money and exchange and its relationship with culture, while Marx would, of course, intend his discussion on commodity fetishism as a critique on the classical economics. References Brah, A. and Coombes, A 2000, Hybridity and its discontents: politics, science, culture, Routledge, London. Dodd, N 1999, Social theory and modernity, Wiley-Blackwell. Fernandez, R 2003, Mappers of society: the lives, times, and legacies of great sociologists, Greenwood Publishing Group. Kamenka, E 1972, The ethical foundations of Marxism, Routledge, London. Marx, K 1988, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. Martin Milligan (trans.) Prometheus Books. Marx, K 1976, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Ben Fowkes (trans.) Penguin Classics. Shakespeare, W 2001, Timon of Athens. Karl Klein (ed.) Cambridge University Press. Simmel, G 1997, Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings. David Frisby and Mike Featherstone (eds.). SAGE. Simmel, G 2004, The philosophy of money. David Frisby and Tom Bottomore (eds.). Routledge, London. Walicki, A 1997, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia. Stanford University Press. Read More