Das Capital: Ch 1, Sec 4 Fetishism of the Commodity

In what is arguably the most quoted section (and also perhaps the most misunderstood) of Das Capital, Marx criticises bourgeois economists who are unable to understand that the exchange value of a commodity is not formed by the nature or the use-value of commodities but by the value (labour) embodied in them. He calls this fetishism because economists are attributing to commodities a quality that commodities do not posses.

Moreover, he explains that this illusion exists because the producers do not confront each other till the moment of exchange and are therefore totally unaware of the social nature of their production. Hence, the market mechanism appears to the producers to be rigid such as the "laws of nature". In fact, the exchange value of commodities is nothing other than a social relation linking producers who perform different kinds of useful labour to each other.

Prices fluctuate around a mean. That mean is the socially necessary labour time embodied in those commodities. This is a discovery of historic proportions (made first by Adam Smith). It is the secret to understanding commodities. All else is an illusion created by mistaking the form of exchange for the substance of the social process.

P.S. this section of Karl Marx is basically also a critique of utilitarian approaches to price.

Видео Das Capital: Ch 1, Sec 4 Fetishism of the Commodity канала Taimur Rahman - Urdu