A determinação categorial do fetichismo como processo de síntese na obra de Marx e linha de força do primeiro capítulo d’O capital

Abstract

This dissertation consists fundamentally of an effort to understand the marxian category of commodity fetishism. In order to do so, I’ve used some of Marx’s works situated in the 185758 period, the Grundrisse up to 1873, the second edition revised by Marx that deals with the commodity fetishism and its secret in the last section of the first chapter of Capital, book one. I intended to demonstrate that, in a way, in this first chapter Marx already works meridian aspects and problems which are crowned in the last section. For this reason we will submit an analysis that can prove our thesis. In another aspect, during his investigative process in the established period, Marx gradually incorporates the thematic of the fetishism as a “line of force” of his analysis until it’s fully incorporated and displayed in the last section of the referred chapter. This aspect refers to the fact that in books II, III and IV of Capital, written between 1861 and 1865, the fetishism theme appears expressively in some of Marx’s analyses. In works such as the Manuscripts from 1861-1863 and the so-called “Unpublished Chapter VI”, and also A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859, we find a marxian treatment of the problem before it was actually exposed in the second edition of Capital in 1873 under a title of its own. These two aspects constitute the theoretical synthesis of our inquiry. Therefore, the foundation of this work consists in presenting a theoretical criticism to any assumptions concerning the subject of fetishism that only take into account the first chapter of Capital, book one. Due to these reasons, we can ratify the fact that this subject is developed through a process of synthesis in the Capital, and that the crowning in the first chapter of its first book is the result of many previous analyses done by Marx during many years of inquiry. Thus, any assumption that relegates this subject only to the first chapter of the first book of the Capital is susceptible to criticism. However, another aspect coats the content of this dissertation, and that is: that this subject emerged in the marxist tradition through a complicated conjunction of variables. Amongst the main ones we could mention the contributions provided by works such as Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness and Isaac Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, both from 1923. Our aim was to demonstrate that such works reflect this conjunction of variables and that at the same time they appear in the scene of the tradition presenting the subject of fetishism as one of the central components of Marx’s theoretical contribution. Our contribution is an intended rigorous analysis of the marxian problem of fetishism, touching upon the legitimation of said problem as being decisive for social assistants to familiarize themselves with.