The Full Value of a Commodity in the Post-Industrial Age

We have relied on Marx and others for their idea of 'commodity fetishism' to enable a critique of capitalism. We believe that with the idea of commodity fetishism, Marx wanted to highlight that the amount of labor expended for the production of a commodity had to be included in the price/value (we use price and value interchangeably) of the commodity. In the industrial age, this meant that the value of the workers in a factory had to be included in the commodity they produced. But how can we take this idea forward and speak of the need to address a new kind of commodity fetishism? How is the idea of commodity fetishism relevant in the post-industrial age, when the labor work force is slowly getting diminished?

What is assumed in the production process of the commodity is that the flows of information regarding the commodity goes in one direction: in theory, from the laborer to the capitalist to the investor. However, such a flow is not necessarily what defines the commodity value today. We have to look at the opposite of the flow laborer-to-investor and look at the flow investor-to-laborer. In short, we must consider how the investor shapes the value of the commodity. It is the demographics of the investor body which also determines the value of a commodity today.

We arrive at such a conclusion because we have witnessed today that the capitalist-investor interaction is itself getting much hype and attention (imagining someone like Steve Jobs as the capitalist and thinking of his presentations of Apple products to the investor body). For instance, it seems that the investor himself/herself is now a part of the media frenzy surrounding a product. The investor is today present to the process of production in a more apparent way. So, it seems to us that this means the investor is also a component in the production and subsequent valuation of the commodity. The investor does not arrive at the end of a production cycle, but intervenes in the process of production during its various points. The investor's behavior, agendas, whims...in short, a type of investor knowledge determines the value of the commodity.

The steady increase in the involvement of the investor, who usually remained behind the scenes for the most part and then performed as the audience for a capitalist's product, might mean something positive for Marxists: that the capitalist is getting marginalized, and the dominating logic is not that the product is produced, but the whys and hows of the production of the product; in short, the investor's questions regarding the product. The capitalist is involved directly with the material product, and disregards questions of its value (because for the capitalist, in a somewhat Lacanian-Zizekian sense, the value of a product is not possible to determine, for the product occupies the position of a lack, a lack which is here understood as the lack of a coexistence of interests to form the relation investor-capitalist-laborer...the capitalist believes in this non-relation of the parties of the production cycle; in a sense, the capitalist disregards the investor and the laborer in the production process). Whereas for the investor, the questions on value are very important, as are the same questions important for the laborer because the value of a product determines the laborer's wages.

Let us end with an example of the reversal of the production cycle. It occurs in Fair Trade products, which do not rely on the capital and labor intensity for the product's value, but rather rely on something more intangible, such as the ethics behind the production process. Ethics is an example of a factor by which the investor values the product. But we cannot only see the positives of such a process, for we must also ensure, in Fair Trade, that the laborer gets as much of a say in the valuation of his/her product as the investor does. In short, the marginalization of the capitalist should not only imply more power for the investor, but the laborer should also get more power in the valuation process. Fair Trade cannot be reduced to a singular, historical moment where the investor and the laborer's valuation align. The post-industrial age cannot signal the return of a new protocol of commodity fetishism, as practiced by the investor rather than the capitalist.