Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.4, 2020

 

Value Form: The Theoretical Orientation of Marx’s Critique of Commodity Fetishism

(Abstract)

 

Wu Meng

 

The “reinterpretation” of historical materialism by Western left-wing thinkers often starts from the critique of commodity fetishism, but their theoretical achievements generally deviate from the standpoint of classical historical materialism, thus failing to realize the modernization of historical materialism. In order to realize the modernization of historical materialism, it is necessary to re-understand Marx’s basic way of grasping realistic movements in the criticism of commodity fetishism. Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism is not the criticism of a certain “fact” (whether it is a “conceptual fact” or a “social fact”), but the part result of his further analysis of value forms, that is, the commodity world established through universal equivalent. As an important link in the process of Marx’s analysis of forms, the criticism of commodity fetishism shows the role that capitalist expression mechanisms centered on historical universal exchanges have played in the construction of producer fetishism and political economy fetishism, and sets up a road sign for the analysis of forms that goes further into the field of capitalist production and reveals the self-negativity of the capitalist realistic movement. The re-understanding of Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism clarifies the important working principle for the modernization of historical materialism: on the one hand, we should adhere to the methodological principles of materialism; on the other hand, we should maintain the transcendental theoretical vision of historical materialism.