A Research On ?i?ek's Theory Of Commodity Fetishism

In this paper,we mainly studies what developments of Marx's theory the reinterpretation of Marx's theory of commodity fetishism by Slavoj ?i?ek,a contemporary western "post-Marxist" thinker,made in terms of research methods,theoretical categories,understanding of the operating mechanism of this phenomenon and practical methods,and the limitations of ?i?ek's theory of commodity fetishism.As we all know,the phenomenon of commodity fetishism first theorized by Karl Marx is the fundamental phenomenon of capitalist mode of production.Marx pointed out that under the mode of production of social division of labor in the private ownership society,the relationship between private labor of producers and the total social labor will inevitably manifest in the illusory way of the reified relationship between goods,and the relationship between things shown in the market will in turn cover the relationship between people in the process of socialization of private labor.The further development of commodity forms,such as money form and capital form,will continue to deepen the reification of social relations and hide the productive relations between people.Marx's purpose in exposing the phenomenon of commodity fetishism is to help people realize the social relations between people covered by the reified representation of the capitalist production,make people be not affected by this kind of appearance,so as to correctly know the operation law of the capitalist mode of production and its law of development,and on this basis,correctly guide socialist practice to transform capitalism.He believed that only by reforming the private ownership and the corresponding mode of production can we get rid of the commodity production and its fetishistic nature.On the basis of Marx's exposition,?i?ek socialized Lacan's psychoanalysis,and explained the operating mechanism of commodity fetishism differently from Marx's way with Lacan's theory of unconsciousness.He thinks that the internal mechanism of commodity fetishism is not the reified performance of the relation between people under a certain mode of production pointed out by Marx,but rather an effect of the manipulation of people's behavior secretively by a set of commodity unconscious symbolic order that is able to run self-consistently,which makes people give the productions of labor commodity form unconsciously in the practice of commodity exchange,and establish the separation of the value forms of commodity and money through the mechanism of false recognition.That is to say,the reified relationship between goods is actually constructed by the unconsciousness,and thus determines the reified relationship between people.This understanding of the operating mechanism of commodity fetishism,he argues,can explain why people today have a cynical attitude characterized by knowingly violation toward commodities,and why it is so hard for people to get rid of commodity fetishism.He believed that in order to break through commodity fetishism,the proletariat,as the "symptom" of the unconscious symbolic order,should overthrow it by rejecting the commodity unconscious order and forming a set of unconscious order constructing a new social relations.In this way,we can see that ?i?ek intends to change the theoretical path of Marxism and further change its practical scheme by interpreting the operation mechanism of commodity fetishism by applying the theory of unconsciousness.However,it can be seen from our research that the theoretical path that ?i?ek understood the social reality of commodity fetishism as the product of an unconscious symbolic order that runs spontaneously without any basis is neither historic nor able to fully explain the social reality.The practice guided by this theoretical understanding will inevitably fall into some kind of utopian state.Although ?i?ek's psychoanalysis of the unconsciousness has some complementary significance to Marx's commodity fetishism theory,we still need to follow and develop Marx's theoretical path of commodity fetishism to guide our practice of reforming capitalist society.