Textual analysis - Essay Example

In identifying this problem one of the salient features that immediately must be considered is a condition that Lukacs refers to as reification. An elucidation of reification will reveal how the commodities structure penetrates and transforms all aspects of bourgeois society and indeed transforms thought within capitalist society. This transformation irrevocably limits the ability for philosophical inquiry and critical theory to function separately from societal forces and for Lukacs the inquiry itself "springs" directly from this now reified structure.

The problem of commodities is one that was comprehensively outlined by Marx and is a fundamental theme in much of the subsequent Marxian analytical tradition. As products are bought and sold in the marketplace, they become commodities. These commodities are alienated from the laborer that was initially responsible for the creation of the product. Individuals who purchase or exchange these commodities are not directly aware of the laborer who produced this commodity, but instead place a value on the existence of the commodity so that it can be exchanged in the market without having to come into contact with the laborer.

As a result this so-called exchange-value of a commodity commodifies the labor itself. The structure of commodification whether it applies to the product o. The problem with this structure is that necessarily conceals what it is supposed to reference, and hence is inherently duplicitous (Lukacs 83). This duplicity has economic consequences for the proletariat that Marx explicates elsewhere. For Lukacs, this structure serves as a "base" and a point of departure for the typical economic concerns that Vulgar Marxists are keen on parsing out. (84) Commodity fetishism, the term Marx uses for this obscuring of social relations has both a specific local context and as a more general application for Lukacs.

The specific context deals with the commodity within the framework of the marketplace, and deals with the exploitation and alienation of the laborer. The general application asks the question, "how far is commodity exchange together with its structural consequences able to influence the total inner and outer life of society" (Lukacs 84). The answer as it turns out will be completely and totally. Yet, he is careful here, and in following Marx, recognizes that commodity-exchange is an "episodic" feature present in the history of mankind (Lukacs 85).

That is, as the objective forms of bourgeois society are periodically instantiated, the role of commodities can operate as a non-dominant form of "metabolic" exchange. Its transformation or reification into the principle organizing structure of a thoroughly capitalist society is attributed to the subjectivization of the commodities-structure where "man's activity becomes estranged from himself," and is possible when the marketplace is fully commodified (Lukacs 87). Though as Lukacs stresses, this reification manifests itself qualitatively