*Desmond McNeill* # Progressive Summary # Definitions # Chapter Notes ## 2 - The Origins of Fetishism in Marx's Writings **When Marx first used the word "fetish"** Herrera, History of the West Indies (1730): > In 1511 a certain Hatuey—a cazique, or native prince—heard that Admiral Don James Columbus had decided to sail from Hispaniola to neighbouring Cuba in order to establish settlements there. He therefore assembled his people, > > and putting them in Mind of their many Sufferings under the Spaniards, told them, ‘They did all that for a great Lord they were very fond of, which he would show them’, and then taking some Gold out of a little Palm-tree Basket, added, ‘This is the Lord whom they serve, him they follow, and as you have already heard, they are about passing over hither, only to seek this Lord, therefore let us make a Festival, and dance to him, to the end that when they come he may order them not to do us harm’. Accordingly they all began to sing and dance, till they were quite tir’d. ... When they were spent with Singing and Dancing before the little basket of Gold,1 Hatuey bid them not to keep the Lord of the Christians in any place whatsoever, for tho’ he were in their Bowels, they would fetch him out, and therefore they should cast him into the River, under Water where they could not find him; and so they did. Marx, in “Debates on the Law of the Thefts of Wood” (1842): > The savages of Cuba regarded gold as a fetish of the Spaniards. They celebrated a feast in its honour, sang in a circle around it and then threw it into the sea. If the Cuban savages had been present at the sitting of the Rhine Province Assembly, would they not have regarded wood as the Rhinelanders’ fetish? > In the article in the Rheinische Zeitung, Marx confronts the category of property, and takes his first steps towards a fuller and more rigorous analysis of all that property involves. “Felled wood is wood that has been worked on. The natural connection with property has been replaced by an artificial one. Therefore anyone who takes away felled wood takes away property. In the case of fallen wood, on the contrary, nothing has been separated from property. It is only what has already been separated from property that is being separated from it.” His understanding of the significance of property may here be inchoate, but what is forcibly conveyed by the earlier passage quoted is Marx’s realisation that concepts such as property determine man’s world-view and hence his actions. Such a world-view is analogous to—indeed is perhaps no less than—a religion. And one of the effects of such a religion is to imbue things with powers over men and over their thoughts. > It is evident from the tone as well as the content that Marx is outraged. The focus of this outrage is the Rhineland Assembly, and the dangers of allowing laws to be made by “an Assembly of the Estates of particular interests” (Marx and Engels 1975a: 262). More generally, the article is an attack on property—not so much the concept as such, but on the right of the property owners to decide upon the definition of the term and hence to cast innocent men into the category of criminals. “The representation of private interests ... abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions by enthroning in their stead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction of a particular material object and a particular consciousness which is slavishly subordinated to this object.” In such a context, the fetish appears as a most apt analogy, for here the object is imbued with the power of religion. “The wooden idols triumph and human beings are sacrificed.” > To put it simply, Marx developed an interest in political economy from a sense of outrage at the institution of private property. He had the unusual capacity to stand outside his own culture and view the categories of thought of that culture as an outsider—seeing them as analogous to a religion (much as Hatuey observed the Spaniards in Cuba). In this religion he observed the importance of the material object imbued with a fantastic power derived from the strange beliefs of the society in which it was found. This explains the significance of the term fetish in its first famous appearance. He employs it in later works; first quite loosely, and then, as I shall describe below, to convey richer, and somewhat different meanings. Throughout his writings, however, we encounter the metaphor of the “veil”, the “mist”, the deceptive appearance which, like religion, prevents one from perceiving reality. --- **Max Weber** > It is consistent, but nevertheless interesting, that another very famous figure of sociology drew on a remarkably similar analogy, albeit much later. In the section titled “The Origins of Religion” in his Economy and Society Max Weber writes as follows: > > Not every stone can serve as a fetish, a source of magical power. Nor does every person have the capacity to achieve the ecstatic states which are viewed ... as the preconditions for producing certain effects in meteorology, healing, divination and telepathy. It is primarily, though not exclusively, these extraordinary powers that have been designated by such special terms as “mana”, “orenda” and the Iranian “maga”. ... We shall henceforth employ the term “charisma” for such extraordinary powers ... a gift that inheres in an object or person simply by virtue of natural endowment ... (or) produced artificially by some extraordinary means. (Weber 1968: 400) > > It is well-known that Weber coined the term “charisma”. Less well known is that this quality could, according to him, inhere also in an object. In origin, then, it was remarkably similar to Marx’s fetish, although the similarity does not extend much beyond this. It is nevertheless significant that Weber, as well as Marx, should find it appropriate to invoke an analogy with primitive religion in discussing social phenomena. Reference: [Weber 2019 - Economy and society: a new translation](zotero://select/items/1_AAL8CND9) --- **History of the word "fetish"** > The word “fetish” comes originally from the Portuguese (Aston 1912: 894). Portuguese sailors first reached the coast of West Africa in 1481, and used the word “feitiços” to refer to the cult objects of the natives they encountered. Thus Purchas in his Pilgrimages (1613) described “strawen rings called Fatissos or Gods” (Marett 1932: 201). “Feitiços” in turn derives from the Latin “factitius” which simply means “skilfully made”. Marx had most likely come across the term in a book by de Brosses called *Du Culte des Dieux Fétiches* (1760). de Brosses is credited for introducing the term "fetish" into comparative religion. > Seventy years after de Brosses, Comte, in his Cours de Philosophie Positive, adopted the term fetishism to refer to the first phase of theology (polytheism and monotheism being the next two). > At its richest, and most unspecific, the term fetish has been applied to many different classes of objects: personified natural objects and phenomena (the Sun, the Sky, and the Earth as a source of food); objects representing a nature-deity or deified man (such as a totem); objects serving as the abode of a spirit; charms or amulets which have a power quite independent of any spirits. Indeed, after Comte the term became increasingly debased, as theories of primitive religion changed. There was the nature-myth school, of which Max Müller was the most powerful representative. This in turn was criticised by Herbert Spencer and, independently but along similar lines, by Tylor who introduced the term “animism” which “virtually sounded the death knell of fetishism as a classificatory term” > In summary, then, the term was first taken up and developed by students of comparative religion and anthropologists. They have generally abandoned it now, partly because its use became too indiscriminate, and partly because changes in the understanding of primitive religion rendered it obsolete. > Before moving on to consider Marx’s own adoption and usage of the term, its application in psychology may be briefly considered (although, of course, this occurred much later). It was first used by the Frenchman and founder of experimental psychology, Alfred Binet, in an article in 1887. Krafft-Ebing, in 1906, took up what he regarded as an apt term “because this enthusiasm for certain portions of the body (or even articles of attire) and the worship of them, in obedience to sexual impulses, frequently call to mind the reverence for relics, holy objects etc. in religious cults” (von Krafft-Ebing 1939: 219). Havelock Ellis also favoured the term (Ellis 1933), but Freud used it only sparingly, for example, in a brief article of 1927, titled “Fetishism”. ## 3 - The Development of the Concept Over Time > I suggest that we may distinguish three separate stages in Marx’s writings. In the first, the word fetishism is used, but the concept is only in an embryonic state. In the second stage, the concept is developing without the word. On the few occasions on which the word is used in this stage, its meaning varies and often differs from the concept. In the third and final stage, the word and the concept come together. > A second type of shift may also be noted in the development of Marx’s use of the term fetishism—from an emphasis on property to an emphasis on the social relations of production. # Quotes # References