Commodity fetishism: A dialectical take on capitalism and wellbeing

Me aged 16 when I was nearing my thinnest

Looking in the mirror, I watch the person in front of me. I move my leg, their leg moves as well. I point a finger forward. They point back at me. I take a step back. They are a step back from where they were before. I observe their appearance taking note of the scant physical form they take: very slim (in fact painfully so), this further made apparent through noticing their very small stature at no more than 5'4, with prominent cheekbones and a very visible collarbone jutting out. Their bones are easily feelable, and their flat chest and their almost concave tummy are very clear to see. Their flesh appears to be wearing away from their ribs, with what remains of it tightly clinging on closer to the bone, as if in fear that it would literally melt away. Their strength and energy wanes and their expression is one of awkwardness and discomfort. This rapid convalescence leaves its mark on this victim in the same way that sand and salt from the sea erode and wear away at stone leaving only the core framework and basic structural integrity of a receding coastline before its eventual collapse.

This may sound like a graphic description of extreme starvation from someone living through famine and feeling the strain on their body through extreme malnutrition, but no, it was the struggles of me in my younger years, a young adult in the UK in a constant battle with an eating disorder. In a society ruled by greed, competition and overconsumption, and the exploitation of our relative assets of many to demonstrate further, there still remain these other extremes in starvation. This starvation is not the fault of a lack of resources, nor is it inability to access the necessary nutrients required to sustain life, and especially not due to ones own mistakes and inability to look after one's own needs (I for one certainly wanted and enjoyed specific foods, all of which being easily available, yet even when they were forced upon me, mentally couldn't bring myself to eat them). This was my experience under a society ruled by extreme beauty standards and expectation, alongside manipulation, abuse and exploitation creating a desire to conform and view the form described here as the new normal. Like it felt normal restricting food intake, leaving food on my plate even if not full (however good it tasted because nothing tasted as good as being slim felt), avoiding dressing in a way that would make me vulnerable (or that revealed too much of what I regarded as less desirable parts of my anatomy), feeling strongly that any vaguely unhealthy foods were evil, and, ultimately, instilling in one's mind that their duty was to avoid sexualisation themselves as opposed to seeing it as a systemic issue within our capitalist system that needs to be addressed. 

But what caused this to continue for me and many others was not just down to myself and my own self hate, and the manipulation by those that brought me down and preyed on my insecurities. It was the fear of repression and the desire to remain in control and able to rise in influence above this system to use it for my own benefit. And the most obvious thing I could control and feel a sense of achievement on controlling it to fit several targetted ideals was my food intake. The image of a popular, attractive young person who effectively conformed to social expectations gleaming in the background, I set about to suffer and experience the problematic influence of capitalism first hand exactly in the ways in which it wanted me to experience it. All I was in society was another subject by which to fulfil a role and act uniformly in the functional way others wanted me to for the sake of conformity and popularity. Even if that meant being tired, irritable and in constant changes of mood, forgoing my favourite foods for something limited that was unsatisfying and bereft of pleasure, voluntarily making myself sick from this, finding socially acceptable ways of declining food, and constantly defining myself by fluctuating numbers on a scale (all things indicative of a heavily challenged existence hard to recognise let alone reverse).

My pleasure and enjoyment for life waned. What I'd eaten or was going to eat controlled my every thought, thus making it appear that my basic needs and pleasure were being rationed- exactly the way capitalism seeks to have us view our core basic humanity (after all, this would no longer be relevant in a world led by outputs, production and the interrelatedness of many forms of exploitation). A further strain on healthcare to effectively provide for this and heavily monetise and capitalism means of recovery as would be noticed here would thus heavily exemplify the crude nature of our capitalist system. The recurrent theme of heavily promoting therapy, medication, and specialist healthcare to mitigate rather than resolve these systemic issues, and to demean the role of social mobilisation in influencing tangible change proves to be the epitome of this failed capitalist system. The methods of which they use to further dehumanise us. To make us appealing, sellable, attractive in a superficial sense, and adapted to evenly and uniformly fit a mould. We were products. We were observed and conditioned in such a way that we could view success as being approved of and sold to someone with an interest for however long was required to be good for them. And this meant feeling sold in much the same that one would sell a piece of meat or a loaf of bread. 

Petite, small waisted, smooth skinned, tight cheeked. These felt like advertising labels. We wore those labels and used them to define ourselves and see each other for who we would appeal to in society. Like meat on sale at a meat market, its price and value determined by its appearance, texture and overall versality with popular taste. Yet looking down at ourselves we could see this fully and refuse to not draw attention from our own bodies. All there to see would be a butcher's shop of organs, a framework of bones, a network of nerves. These all seeming to even further objectify us and see us merely for our own raw components, with no regard for who we actually were underneath and for our personality (if this was still the way it was meant to be under this conditioning. As such, the dehumanising nature of capitalist principles can be very clearly seen to be coming into play, and therefore, a good dialectical understanding of the prevalence of commodity fetishism within these processes would be crucial in recognising these issues, and understanding how I, Frankie Rosenberg along with many others learned to overcome them.

With fetishism in its purest form relating to the attributing of human characteristics to non-human objects and concepts, commodity fetishism in the form Karl Marx considered it as seeks to apply the relations individual commodities have with the labour that produced them and its social character. As such, it can be seen that each individual commodity is valued by the extent of work and effort of the humans that produced it, or as Marx defined it in Das Kapital Volume 1, "the measure of the expenditure of labour power" and the overall "expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles .etc" in its production. This can thus be effectively applied to many of the industries surrounding the media, pornography and any overtly hypersexualising means of perpetuating problematic ideals within society, and thus generating significant income from the consumption of this, thus in turn having knock-on effects on the provision of sufficient and adequate support for those influenced in this way through healthcare services continuing to be put under pressure to provide this, or alternatively in turn gain greater external funds. This all proves to effectively link back to the idealised standards which compelled me and many others to undergo intense physical and psychological repression instilled by insecurity and inability for my own assets and own hard work to recognise these, as a result leading to increased stress and greater aforementioned "expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles .etc" to fulfil this need.  

Moreover, in relation to this principle, the heavy monetisation and commodification of this healthcare in question, appears to be equally objectifying and dehumanising. Thus arguably appears to almost function as a subtle form of rationing basic humanity and defining it by its interactions with commodified assets, as well as, upon having limitations to the form it takes and its success, can be seen to favour certain lives (i.e. those that are the most well adapted to better functioning through the realm of an evolving capitalist society) appearing to be better suited and a greater priority for these methods of acting upon these issues than others. Indeed, while class struggle and greater collective action against the repressive forces of society that instil these ideals would be a more effective means of reducing the stresses they posed and achieving legitimate tangible change for the oppressed, it remains to be a sad reflection of our society that capitalism continues to overrule our real interests in every regard. This, therefore, proved to have only served as a means of alienating and objectifying me and many further as I navigated my way through a society ruled by shallow and superficial standards that fail to truly define the real assets and value of people before reaching the true intrinsic factors that define their personalities and genuine presence as individuals with interests in society. After all, if productivity to fit a niche, appear as an effectively functioning commodity, and fit a mould shaped through continual idealisation and oversimplified general quotidian discourse on social expectation, and thus the greatest priority within society, it would look to make us seem like we aspire to become robots, which is exactly what the highest stage of capitalism requires to be maintained. And, therefore, it is only through revolutionising society and opposing these clearly defined norms that we can avoid reaching this point.