Some context : Alienation
Commodity Fetishism is the tendency of humans to assign value to commodities. We think of commodities as something valuable, i.e. as things that have a "value" or "worth". The issue is that this "value" cannot be determined or divined by analysing the commodity itself, and yet we are sure that a car is more valuable than a cake. If this "value" is not coming from the commodity then it must come from somewhere else.
For example- consider how you think that an iPhone is valuable because you had to pay $1000 for it. But that $1000 figure cannot be derived by analysing the actual iPhone. Therefore it's coming from elsewhere. YET in our minds the value is somehow inherent to the iPhone itself. It's the iPhone that is valuable. That's Commodity Fetishism. This tendency can be tied to the alienation a consumer experiences from the social structures and labour that actually creates the commodity. So instead of valuing the things where the value actually comes from, we start valuing the commodity itself, as if it's a completely isolated/alienated entity with inherent value that magically appeared on the market shelf.
Species Being can be thought of as the mode of existence of a species. A dolphin's "being" or it's sheer "dolphinness" manifests itself when a dolphin does dolphin stuff. Like swimming in the ocean and catching fish. I.e. the natural processes it's body is designed for. Similarly an eagle's species being is flying in the sky and using its binocular vision to catch terrestrial prey. It's the state of being for an animal. Can an eagle living in a cage or a dolphin not being able to hunt in the open ocean, living a life that it is supposed to live?
According to Marx, the species being of humans is work that is achieved socially. We work alongside other humans, using tools, to produce things that create and sustain our living. We create our mode of life through that work, from hunter gatherer to industrial society. But under modern capitalism, the alienated worker is no longer able to experience his species being, as his work and the resulting commodity are alienated from him. In that respect he is no different from a caged Eagle that cannot fly. He is not living a complete human life because the work is not a manefestation of his own species being.
Commodity Fetishism is the tendency of humans to assign value to commodities. We think of commodities as something valuable, i.e. as things that have a "value" or "worth". The issue is that this "value" cannot be determined or divined by analysing the commodity itself, and yet we are sure that a car is more valuable than a cake. If this "value" is not coming from the commodity then it must come from somewhere else.
For example- consider how you think that an iPhone is valuable because you had to pay $1000 for it. But that $1000 figure cannot be derived by analysing the actual iPhone. Therefore it's coming from elsewhere. YET in our minds the value is somehow inherent to the iPhone itself. It's the iPhone that is valuable. That's Commodity Fetishism. This tendency can be tied to the alienation a consumer experiences from the social structures and labour that actually creates the commodity. So instead of valuing the things where the value actually comes from, we start valuing the commodity itself, as if it's a completely isolated/alienated entity with inherent value that magically appeared on the market shelf.
Species Being can be thought of as the mode of existence of a species. A dolphin's "being" or it's sheer "dolphinness" manifests itself when a dolphin does dolphin stuff. Like swimming in the ocean and catching fish. I.e. the natural processes it's body is designed for. Similarly an eagle's species being is flying in the sky and using its binocular vision to catch terrestrial prey. It's the state of being for an animal. Can an eagle living in a cage or a dolphin not being able to hunt in the open ocean, living a life that it is supposed to live?
According to Marx, the species being of humans is work that is achieved socially. We work alongside other humans, using tools, to produce things that create and sustain our living. We create our mode of life through that work, from hunter gatherer to industrial society. But under modern capitalism, the alienated worker is no longer able to experience his species being, as his work and the resulting commodity are alienated from him. In that respect he is no different from a caged Eagle that cannot fly. He is not living a complete human life because the work is not a manefestation of his own species being.
