You’re a communist selling a commodity?
Yes. And what about it?
Is the problem with the commodity or with the general production of commodities? Or is it with the relationship of labor and laborer to the production of commodities? Under capitalism a worker is free in two ways. The first way they are free is that they are free to sell their labor power to anyone who is willing to pay a wage for it. The second way a worker is free is that they are freed from owning anything except for their labor power.
The capitalist purchases labor power to produce large numbers of commodities. They purchase machinery to produce them faster. They run the fine craftspeople out of business and hire them to produce on their behalf, increasing output.
The more they produce, the less the value of the commodities, but the more they produce the more they can sell. This is because value is determined by the average amount of time it takes to produce a commodity, not by a capitalist’s desire for profit. The more they sell the more profit there is to be made, and none of that profit goes to the proletariat.
I am selling merch as an option for people who want to support my work and to help me produce my propaganda and educational material. I am aware of the theft of surplus labor value under capitalism, but I am asking you to remain critical of your relation to the production of commodities under capitalism.
What is the negative of the production of commodities? Is it the production itself or is it the exploitation by the capitalist? The capitalist reduces the value of commodities and causes many crises with overproduction, but we still need many commodities to survive. We still need food, medicine, shelter, and many other things to live and thrive. Many of these are produced as commodities. So no, it is not the production of commodities that is evil.
It is the capitalist who has only their own interests in mind. The capitalist, who hoards everything we need to survive, who purchases the labor power used to develop life-saving medicine and then pays us not enough to purchase the medicine we just produced. The capitalist, who steals up all of the land and puts it to unproductive use during times of famine for there is no profit in feeding people who are hungry just because.
The mass production of bread is a good thing. The mass distribution of bread would be even better. The social distribution of labor to facilitate this is a GOOD thing. The capitalist and their desire for profit, profit, and more profit, is what stands in the way of all the good commodity production can do. We have no qualms over concern about selling merch, or promoting commodities. There is nothing wrong with commodities. Commodities, the things, are good.
But if commodity production can be good…then what are Marxists talking about when they talk about Commodity Fetishism?
What is Commodity Fetishism?
First you need to know what the different kinds of values commodities have. There is Value. What a commodity is worth. This is not determined by its use value or its exchange value. These are all determined separately from each other. To understand where a commodity’s value comes from we need to understand why its value does not come from its use value or its exchange value.
First, There is an object’s use value. What it is used for. A sweater’s use value is to be worn, an umbrella’s use value is to shelter you from rain.
A mug’s use value is that is can hold a beverage to drink.
The use value of a commodity is inherent. If you made pottery and made a mug and used it at home to drink coffee, you would be getting the use value of the mug. If you sold the mug, the use value remains the exact same to whomever is using the mug to drink from. The use value of each commodity remains static, and does not change.
The exchange value of a commodity changes often based on where you might be and the current conditions of that era of history. The exchange value refers to the number of one commodity that you would exchange for another commodity. The example Marx uses in Capital is linen for a coat.
20 Yards of Linen for 1 Coat
But this is not static. Some days it may be 30 yards. Some days 15. Sometimes 20 yards will get you 2 coats. It changes depending on location, resource availability, productive development.
Under capitalism the exchange value is often portrayed as it’s use value, but this is an illusion. And identifying these values allows us to understand a couple simultaneous things. One is that commodities exchanged with each other can also be exchanged for another, third and unidentified, commodity. If this is true there must be some kind of value that is determined separately from all three that allows us to understand how to make these exchanges.
The reality is that when you abstract value, eliminate Use and Exchange from the consideration, you are left with a commodity that was produced by proletarian labor-power. Commodity Fetishism is when the proletarians are tricked by the isolation of Capitalism into thinking their relationship with a commodity is our relationship to owning that commodity, when in reality the existence of this commodity is proof of our relationship to all the individual producers involved in the creation of this commodity. The lumberer, the wood worker, the painter, the shipper, the shelf-stocker, the salesman. The commodity itself disguises our relationship as consumer with those workers.
When you hold this mug, you’re not just holding ceramic and ink. You’re holding the labor of countless hands. You’re holding a piece of the social relations that produced it. And under capitalism, those social relations are hidden from you. The mug doesn’t tell you about the worker who made it. It doesn’t tell you about their wages or their working conditions. It doesn’t tell you about the exploitation that made its production possible.
That’s commodity fetishism. It’s not about liking things too much. It’s about the way capitalism makes us see things instead of people, objects instead of relations, commodities instead of labor.
So what does this mean for my mug?
I am not going to pretend this mug isn’t a commodity. It is. It exists in a capitalist system. It was produced by someone who was paid a wage, likely underpaid. It’s being sold for money. Most of the profit from the sale or production of this mug will not be seen by me or anyone who produced it.
But I’m not going to pretend that’s the problem or that I am somehow “larping” as a Socialist by selling merch or commodities.
The problem will always be our common enemy: The Bourgeoisie. Our enemy is not other laborers or other workers, and many of us must continue to participate in these systems to survive. As a person who makes propaganda and educational material that is freely accessible: my income is very limited and this likely will not change that either.
I am not under the illusion that Gay Bomb Squad mugs will save the world.
I’m asking you to see it for what it is: a useful object that supports a political project. If this is something you support and want to help contribute to the development of: Please buy a mug!
If you purchase a mug, we would love to see it in the discord.
We are using Fourthwall to Produce Merch
The Gay Bomb Squad 