Commodity fetishism and MBTI

[entropie]

Well I am not really politically strongly opionated in any direction nor am I a great philosopher, but I've seen this yesterday and I thought to myself: yes that reflects my own thoughts.

The whole IPhone phaenomenom, when everybody needed to buy that phone for no apparent practical or technical reason that all can be related to whats said here:

In Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things (commodities and money).

The concept of commodity fetishism plays a crucial role in Marx's theory of capitalism, because it links the subjective aspects of economic value to its objective aspects, through the transformation of a symbolization of value into a reification which attains the power of an objective social force.[1] It plays an integral part in Marx's explanation of why economic relationships and interactions in capitalism often appear quite differently from what they really are. The concept is introduced at the conclusion of an analysis of the value-form of commodities in the first chapter of Marx's main work, Das Kapital. Subsequently he clarifies in Das Kapital that many different economic phenomena can be "fetishized" (the fetish of money, the fetish of interest-bearing capital, etc.) to the extent that they attain an independent power vis-a-vis the people.[2] But these further developments of commercial fetishism nevertheless have their historical origin in commodity trade.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

He says that commodities are traded like a religious fetish, an image of the real work people did. And like God is being an invention of the human mind, ruling the human mind; those fetishes are ruling the minds of the people living in a society of commodities thinking they are enlighted.

So to make a big Ne-leap here, what do you think ? Is us being here today discussing who we are the direct result of what's said above ? Has our fixation on commodities mystified human relations ? What is your opinion ?

 

[KDude]

I don't know if I fully understand. I don't have an iPhone (or smartphone) myself, but I think the popularity of it is more practical in nature. They were one of the first to simplify/streamline/popularize the smartphone concept (along with making it more entertaining), and I think it appealed on that level. For whatever reason, people simply think it's useful. Do they really worship it?

I think fetishism was more on display in Apple's early years.. beginning with the first Mac in 1984 and on down the line until just recently (nowadays, I think Apple is just another impersonal corporation and with a lot of new customers who are like the above.. they appreciate their products for practical reasons). In the past, Mac users connected and networked like a cult throughout the 80's and 90's. There were a lot more user groups back then ("MUGs"), and a lot more evangelism to boot. Partly out of being fans of an underdog product that didn't have the ubiquitous presence of IBM/Microsoft. If you had a PC, you could get support or applications just about anywhere. Mac users needed to connect in a more grass roots kind of fashion, and I think fetishism was a somewhat ironic byproduct of their kind of victimized attitude. And then later, even Apple themselves tapped into this spirit with their "Think Different" slogans.