Fetish Value
= from the book, Capital Redefined, to be contrasted with True Value
Discussion
S.A. Hamed and Barry K. Gils:
"In this book, we introduce the term ‘fetish value’ to distinguish our conception of value from that of classical political economy and its Marxian critique, encompassing Marx’s idea of (commodity) value but extending beyond it, as we will elaborate. Fetish value should not be confused with Marx’s ‘fictitious value’ that refers to ‘fictitious capital’ as its embodiment versus ‘real value’ embodied in productive capital. While keeping the notion of value within the contours of production relations, David Harvey instead prefers the notion of ‘anti-value’ (Harvey, 2018b). To avoid confusion, we have chosen to use the terms ‘fetish value’ (not to be confused with Baudrillard’s concept either) and ‘True Value’ instead.
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As we will argue in the rest of the book, capital can be seen as ‘fetish value in motion and operation’; a form that is ‘negative’ both in function as a destructive force and in magnitude as it is a loss in true value, necessary for the survival and self-fulfillment of organized life. This approach will avoid ambiguity caused by assigning the term ‘value’ (which inherently implies normativity) to (unfree) labor under capital. Labor in its natural (un-reified, free) form is a social commons of the efficient type since the (individual) capacity for creativity and re/production is a part and product of historically formed collective coexistences. Ignoring this reality results in confusing labor (under capital), abstract or concrete, with human creative power. Therefore, as we will discuss, for the abstraction of labor out of its commoning sources (i.e., abstract labor as a reified social form of creative power susceptible to exploitation), capital has to disconnect/alienate labor from its ecological, communal, and political settings. In the capitalist mode of production, the rest of the ‘fundamental commons’ are treated as preconditions for the production of fetish value, thus making labor deprived of its access to these now peripheralized or colonized commons.
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Those disputing what should be included in the perception of the sources of value tend to ignore the fact that from a non-capitalist point of view, ‘value under capital’ (or commodity value as theorized in Marx’s Capital) is nothing but a deficit, given that it results in the annihilation of ‘inclusive good life.’ Therefore, it is vital to differentiate between ‘true value’ as defined from a commonist point of view as a partly experienced, partly imagined, quality of life through non-submissive social relations like in oikos, on the one hand, versus the so-called capitalist value. Considering the differences between the two, what our theory of value should concentrate on as its primary subject is the role of capitalist value in the destruction of true value. That is, a process of a growing deficit in aggregate true value under capital that we conceptualize under the title of ‘fetish value.’
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‘Fetish value’: the value that is not only the result of but also results in damaging the more-than-human capacities to generate true value. This definition is crucial to make possible the synthesis between the original Marxian value theory and critical theories disappointed with its narrowness. The commonist approach we advocate will be based on differentiating between fetish value, capitalist value, commodity value, and true value. It does not require the negation of Marx/Marxian theory of value since it still includes its notion of value to be complemented with fetish value relative to true value and to be located in broader realms of more-than-human creativity, liveability, conviviality, and alterity.
Fetish value is inclusive of but not limited to the abstract economic (exchange) value of commodities. It is broad enough to include relations outside the capitalist mode of production itself. Fetish value is thus understood as a quality attributed to the results of any decommoning activity under capital, which is socially fetishized to appear to have an intrinsic value for the well-being of the individuals and collectives involved. It thus functions against their true value.
True value, on the other hand, is any quality definitive and
advantageous for the survival, self-fulfillments, and liberation of more-thanhuman organized life if and only if:
(1) it is decided and realized in the most consensual, context-specific, collaborative way possible (consensual feature); and
(2) it challenges the mechanisms of the construction of fetish value to their core (de-fetishizing feature). The latter condition is essential to avoid the widespread delusion that any activity beneficial to the material and psychological survival of the human community that happens in conjunction or symbiotic relationships with capital would be intrinsically ‘transformative.’ This differentiates between non-transformative and transformative true value."
(https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/290382/1/9781003805588.pdf)