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Marx suggests that commodity is inherently sophisticated; it is something undefined and distant form the comprehension by a regular person, it has something mystical in its characteristics. Everything is so uncertain in that situation with the commodity that one actually has to look at it from the theological prospective in order to gain better understanding. It is possible to refer to Marx's use-value of the commodity. Probably, it is only destined to be evident for the use-value; the correspondences of those concepts have their evident function: phenomenology as the discourse of use-value so as not to imagine the market or with the prospective of making people blind to the notion of exchange-value that was already discussed above. That is the most obvious reason why the phenomenological good sense of the commodity, or the way people perceive that particular commodity, can actually facilitate enlightenment, since Marx believes that in that situation there is nothing supernatural about the use - value of the commodity. Basically, it is going to appear as a question of one attribute only the question of property.
If one refers to the use value of the commodity, those properties are actually rather human. They coincide with the properties of men, since that is one of the most crucial characteristics of any commodity at issue. There are a couple of ways that Marx illustrates as to how those properties can be associated with men and the needs of men: they either correlate with the mens needs, which is their use value, or appear to become the creation of the mens activity that utilizes them for those needs. 7 Marx is able to come up with a good illustration of the theory mentioned above; he utilizes the example of the wooden table. He suggests that it will always remain nothing else than mere wood, even when it is used to construct a table it is a commonplace, sensuous thing. However, the things change rather quickly once that wooden table becomes a commodity and is sold on the market. Then, according to Marx, the wooden table commodity starts to establish itself as a market value.
The woody essence of the commodity is transformed into something mystical, into something that cannot be comprehended from the first glance, but rather needs careful analyses and interpretation. The ghostly scheme then becomes vital. The commodity, thus, is inherently thing without observable fact, something that is able to surpass the senses; however, that transformation is not exactly of a spiritual nature, it helps Marx to distinguish between specter and spirit and to convey that differentiation to his readers. Something that is able to surpass the senses still exists in a body that it also somehow lacks, since it is definitely inaccessible to men.
The notion of haunting analyzed and elaborated upon by Derrida is at work when we try to understand that example. The commodity actually is able to haunt the thing, since its specter is working in the use value that we have talked about before. This haunting displaces itself like an anonymous silhouette or the figure of an extra who might be the principal or capital character. It changes places, one no longer knows exactly where it is, it turns, and it invades the stage with its moves. 8 Marx suggests that the commodity enters the stage and transforms into something supersensible, into something that is able to react and adapt to the environment, into something with mystical and supernatural characteristics that are not always evident.
It is actually able to interact with all the other commodities, it is something that is becoming rather hard to determine. Indeed, what words should be deployed in order to better describe that commodity: Life, Thing, Beast, Object, Commodity, Automaton in a word, specter. It is no longer a simple thing, however it also lacks the attributes that are present in all the Life objects, it represents the wide array of the creature that remains not comprehended by humanity at large, such mystical and supernatural creatures as whims, chimeras, etc. When we discuss and try to analyze that commodity, that wooden table at issue, the most obvious thing is the physical matter of which it has been originally composed, constructed or created, whatever word suits the best in the given situation. The first matter is wood. This appearance of immateriality of matter, which was discussed above, seems to take no time at all; it is a momentous transformation yet to be comprehended by the representatives of the humankind.
There is a temptation to describe that transformation as animism and spiritism, since the material object wood seems to become alive and crowded with various spirits. Challenge or invitation, support, seduction, countering seduction, need or war, affection or hatred, aggravation of other ghosts: Marx insists on this a lot since there is a magnitude of that sociality (there is always more than only one commodity, more than only one spirit, and even more specters). The number belongs to the motion itself, to the non-complete and rather hard to define process of specialization. If this supernatural characteristic or this spectral impact of the commodity (wooden table in our example) cannot possibly be produced by the use then the value discussed above, is simultaneously reflective and external in its nature. Besides, it is simply because the very essence of the impact is created out of a relation, out of something referred to as double social bond by Marx. 9
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Research essay sample on Mystical And Supernatural Value Of The Commodity Marx
