Commodity Fetishism and Black Friday

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Definitions:

Black Friday: the Friday after Thanksgiving when everybody goes shopping.
Commodity fetishism: The belief that a commodity can hold power, and furthermore that its true value can be disassociated from its use value, which is created by the nature of the commodity itself.

“A commodity, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood…so far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour.” (Marx 47).

The above quote by Karl Marx serves to introduce part of his book dedicated to “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof.” I believe this topic to be integral to modern society, with grand emphasis on the modern holiday called Black Friday. On Black Friday, we gather in mass to buy superfluous commodities.

Marx wrote extensively on the inherent issues with the concept of commodities.

Black Friday is objectively awful: there’s even a website that tracks injuries caused by Black Friday. Yet we continue to celebrate this day every year. But why? The cause I propose is not the orthodox commodity fetishism described by Marx and Engels (for that pervades society all year round), but a new form of commodity fetishism that fetishizes not the commodity itself but the time and place of transaction. We, as a society, believe that it is better to buy on Black Friday than on any other day of the year. This implies that a commodity bought on Black Friday has more power and is more dissociated than standard commodities.

This dissociation furthers the alienation of labor of the workers that created the commodity, furthering the oppression of the proletariat. It is no secret that retail workers are some of the most exploited people in modern society. Moreover, Black Friday exacerbates retail workers’ exploitation (by many orders of magnitude!). Because our consumerism feeds into working hours, Black Friday is a sin we partake in together.

Consumerism unleashed on Black Friday

It is typical for prices to change on Black Friday, but this itself is not enough to explain the physiological transformation that we go through. We treat each other as if we are not human simply as a result of discounts, which occur fairly often. What causes us to be victims of this ideological fetishism? The origin of the fetishism does not come from the use value of the commodity, as stated by Marx. If it did, the time and place of the transaction would not have an effect on the use value of the commodity.

The time and place of transaction also does not not affect the amount of labor that goes into the production of the commodity and therefore does not change its value, in terms of the labor theory of value. This fact contributes to the mystery that is the commodity. “This Fetishism of commodities has its origin…in the peculiar social character of the labor that produces them. As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labor of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other” (Marx 48).

The commodities bought on Black Friday are owned by the same people as the commodities the rest of the year. Therefore, we must look to the other part of Marx’s statement, and not see Black Friday as a general case of fetishism but a specific case of fetishism. This, however, does not negate the fact that fetishism is still caused by peculiar social character. It is for this reason that I draw the conclusion that Black Friday fetishism comes from time and place of transaction, simply because it cannot be anything else.

The ultimate questions that surface are “Why this time?” and “Why does it matter?”

Candy Companies Market Halloween Early to Bolster Pandemic Sales - Eater — Halloween exemplifies the forced consumerism of many American holidays.

I believe that we fetishize this time for no specific reason. Sure, there is some logic seeing as it is right before the gifting holidays (Christmas and New Year’s), but these don’t really have any substantial significance because

they, too, were also chosen to be at arbitrary points. The reason this matters is because without the structural critique of capitalism, we would simply exist with no free will, being slaves to those who own our labor, manufacture our consent, invent our reality, and enforce ideology. Critiques are a taste of freedom from the world we live in, a sneak peek into what truly constitutes reality. Less abstractly, seeing this fetishism allows you to bypass it and become free.