Inanimate Objects

"Inanimate things could do what they wanted. Not what
they wanted because things do not want; only men. But
things do what they do ..." (V., Ch. 1, p. 26)

Et alia ...

From Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, "The Process of
Production of Capital," Pt. I, "Commodities and
Money," Ch. 1, "Commodities," Sec. 4, "The Fetishism
of Commodities and the Secret Thereof," trans. Samuel
Moore and Edward Aveling (1887 [1867]) ...

"There is a physical relation between physical things.
But it is different with commodities. There, the
existence of the things qua commodities, and the
value-relation between the products of labour which
stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no
connexion with their physical properties and with the
material relations arising therefrom. There it is a
definite social relation between men, that assumes, in
their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between
things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we
must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of
the religious world. In that world the productions of
the human brain appear as independent beings endowed
with life, and entering into relation both with one
another and the human race. So it is in the world of
commodities with the products of men's hands. This I
call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the
products of labour, so soon as they are produced as
commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from
the production of commodities."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

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