In his writings on commodity fetishism, German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, well-known for his 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, argues that in commodities, “the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour” (Marx …show more content…
In Karl Marx’s critique on political economy, he argues that “since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange” (Marx 474). The producers’ relations with one another are dependent on market exchanges. Marx suggests that people have no relations with each other; therefore, social relations are continually mediated and expressed with objects such as commodities and money. Commodities hold value from the labour put in by individuals and those emotions and values are transferred through the trade of