A Critical Study Of Marx's Capital Fetishism

Capital fetishism prevailed in modern Europe,and bourgeois economists and political economists spoke on "capital" one after another.The bourgeois classical political economists represented by Francois Quesnay,Adam Smith and David Ricardo generally start from the dimension of things to open the mystery of capital.The bourgeois vulgar political economists represented by Jean-Baptiste Say,James Mill and Nassau William Senior absolutely enlarged the vulgar elements in Smith and Ricardo’s capital theory,and put forward the views of "Trinity Formula","capital productivity theory" and "capital abstinence theory" respectively,which also deepened the interpretation of the mystery of capital proliferation.In Marx’s view,they are undoubtedly defending the capitalists and the capitalist ruling class,which inspired Marx’s exploration of capital fetishism.Capital fetishism is the wrong view that people in capitalist society worship capital like gods and think that capital has the magic of self proliferation.It is a unique product of capitalist society.In order to uncover the mystery of capital fetishism,Marx began with the manifestation of capital objects,discriminated the performance of capital in different movement stages from industrial capital movement,commercial capital movement and interest bearing capital movement,gradually revealed the process of deepening the mystery of capital,and analyzed that people only regarded capital as material itself such as goods,means of production and money,but failed to see the essence of capital,That is,the social relationship between capitalists and employed workers.In fact,capital fetishism is the product of not understanding the essence of capital and the true source of surplus value.Surplus value is hidden by "profit" and confused by "capitalist wage",completely ignoring that the real source of surplus value lies in the surplus labor of employed workers,which has become a synonym for capitalists’ exploitation of employed workers.Marx’s criticism of capital fetishism is not only the analysis of the nature of capital fetishism,but also the revelation of the illusion that truthfully reflects the capitalist production relations,uncovers the mystery of capital,reveals the ugly face of capitalists exploiting people with capital,and finally points the spearhead at the capitalist system itself to complete the criticism of bourgeois ideology.The criticism of capital fetishism provides theoretical significance for opening up a new field of ideological research and realizing the importance of the proletariat as the main body of history.At the same time,recognizing that capital fetishism is a unique product of the development of capitalist society has important practical significance in recognizing the disadvantages of contemporary capitalist development and avoiding the risks of China’s socialist market economy construction.