'fetishism of commodities'

Marx depicts commodities as what they are for 2 principle relations. Marx speaks of the labor hours which are put into a product which he calls labor value and that which it is it is useful for man. Marx writes of “fetishism of commodities” to discuss an exception of the binary of types of value.  Marx says that commodities are not what people find useful or gratifying to themselves, but rather provide them social capital. “There the existence of the things qua commodities, and the value-relation between the products of labor commodities, and the value relation between the products of labor which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties or with the material relation arising there from” (321). This process extends to buying luxury goods. When one buys a luxury item she often does not purchase it because it is useful to her or find it the value of the labor hours it took to produce it. She often buys it because she likes the way others will assume about her. Marx says that commodities are designed for the social capital they produce rather than the actual item itself. Marx’s theory can easily be applied to speculation. The act of valuing a good not for use or labor but rather for society’s understanding is a different idea.