The concept of reification was acquired mainly through the work of Georg Lukács (1923) in his essay “The Reification and Consciousness of the Proletariat” as part of his book History and Class Consciousness; This is the “locus classicus” to define the term in its current sense. Here, Lukács treats it as a problem of capitalist society, linked to the prevalence of the commodity form, through a careful reading of Marx`s chapter on commodity fetishism in capital. Reification was not a particularly important concept or concept, neither in Marx`s own works nor in those of his immediate successors. In Marxism, reification is the process by which social relations are perceived as attributes inherent in the people involved in them or as attributes of a product of the relationship, as an exchanged commodity. However, this implies that the principle of rational mechanization and predictability must encompass all aspects of life. Consumer goods no longer appear as products of a biological process within a community (as in a village community). They now appear, on the one hand, as abstract members of a species, by definition identical to their other members, and on the other hand, as isolated objects whose possession or non-possession depends on rational calculations. Only when the whole life of society is thus fragmented into isolated acts of commodity exchange can the “free” worker arise; At the same time, its fate becomes the typical fate of society as a whole. There is no explicit concept or concept of reification in Hegel, but some of his analyses seem to be close to him, for example. his analysis of observational reason in the phenomenology of mind or his analysis of property in his philosophy of law.
The true history of the concept of reification begins with Marx`s interpretation of Marx and Marx`s Lukács. Although the idea of reification is already implicit in Marx`s early works (for example, in economic and philosophical manuscripts), an explicit analysis and use of “reification” begins in his later writings and culminates in Grundriss and Capital. The two most focused discussions on reification are found in chapter I, chapter I, section 4, and chapter III, chapter 48. In the first of these, on commodity fetishism, there is no definition of reification, but fundamental elements for a theory of reification are nevertheless given in a series of pregnant statements: Despite the fact that the problem of reification was discussed by Marx in Capital, which was published partly during his lifetime and partly shortly after his death, What was generally recognized as his masterpiece, his analysis was very neglected for a long time. Greater interest in the problem developed only after Lukács drew attention to him and discussed it creatively, combining Marx`s influences with those of Max Weber (who explained important aspects of the problem in his analyses of bureaucracy and rationalization; see Lowith 1932) and Simmel (who discussed the problem in The Philosophy of Money). In the central and longest chapter of History and Class Consciousness on “The Reification and Consciousness of the Proletariat”, Lukács starts from the point of view that “commodity fetishism is a specific problem of our time, the age of modern capitalism” (p. 84), and also that it is not a marginal problem, but “the central structural problem of capitalist society” (p. 83). According to Lukács, “the essence of the commodity structure” has already been clarified in the following way: “Its basis is that a relationship between people takes on the character of a thing and thus acquires a `phantom objectivity`, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-encompassing that it hides any trace of its fundamental nature: the relationship between persons” (p. 83).
In addition to “the importance of this problem for the economy itself,” Lukács set out to discuss the broader question: “To what extent is the exchange of goods, with its structural consequences, capable of influencing the entire external and internal life of society?” (p. 84). He points out that two facets of the phenomenon of commodity reification or fetishism (which he calls “the objective” and the subjective have been distinguished): “Objectively, a world of objects and relations between things arises (the world of commodities and their movements on the market). Subjectively – where the market economy is fully developed – man`s activity alienates itself, it becomes a commodity which, subject to the non-human objectivity of the natural laws of society, must, like any consumer article, follow its own path independently of man. (p. 87). Both parties follow the same basic process and are subject to the same laws. Thus, the basic principle of capitalist commodity production, “the principle of rationalization on the basis of what is calculated and can be calculated” (p. 88), extends to all spheres, including the “soul” of the worker and, more broadly, to human consciousness. “Just as the capitalist system continually produces and reproduces itself economically at higher levels, the structure of reification sinks ever deeper, more fatally and more definitively into the consciousness of man” (p.
93). The concept is related, but different from, Marx`s theories of commodity alienation and fetishism. [1] Alienation is the general state of human alienation; Reification is a specific form of alienation; Commodity fetishism is a specific form of reification. Andrew Feenberg (1981) interprets Lukács` central category of “consciousness” as similar to anthropological notions of culture as a set of practices. [4] [5] In particular, the reification of consciousness is therefore more than a simple act of error detection; It concerns daily social practice at a fundamental level beyond the individual subject. 1. The treatment of a relatively abstract designator (e.g., technology, mind, or self) as if it were a single, limited, undifferentiated, solid, and immutable thing whose essential nature could be taken for granted (see essentialism). It is a representative practice that serves to establish the obvious reality of the concept in question by treating it as if it had the ontological status of a certain physical thing in an objective material world. Reification removes human intervention in the process of definition, as if the signifier were neutral and an integral part of something already existing in the world. Reification does not take into account the cultural and ideological framework conditions that produced the signifier.
Just because we have a word for something like ourselves or the mind does not make it a “real” entity, and yet the widespread and routine use of a signifier can confirm the existence of the signifier as something obvious in itself. Perception itself can inevitably involve reification. Technological determinists are often criticized for objectifying technology in general or a particular medium such as television or computers. Reification is a hard-to-avoid accusation, as any use of linguistic categorization (including words such as “society” or “culture”) could be attacked as reification. Although this process is not yet complete, the methods of obtaining surplus labor are obviously more brutal than in the later, more developed phase, but the process of objectification of labor and therefore also of the consciousness of the worker is much less advanced. Reification requires that a society learn to satisfy all its needs in terms of commodity exchange. The separation of the producer from his means of production, the dissolution and destruction of all “natural” units of production, etc. And all the social and economic conditions necessary for the emergence of modern capitalism tend to replace “natural” relations, which more clearly show human relations, with rationally reified relations. “Social relations between individuals in the exercise of their work,” Marx observes, referring to pre-capitalist societies, “appear in any case as their own personal relations and are not disguised as social relations between the products of labour.” [15] The fact that the limits are not clearly defined should not obscure the qualitative nature of the decisive distinction. The situation in which the exchange of commodities is not dominant was defined by Marx as follows: “The quantitative relation in which products are exchanged is at first quite arbitrary. They take the form of commodities because they are interchangeable goods, that is, the expression of one and the same third party.
Continuous exchange and more regular reproduction for the sake of exchange increasingly reduce this arbitrariness. But initially not for the producer and the consumer, but for their intermediary, the trader, who compares money prices and pockets the difference.