Commodities only have any value because we put meanings and values upon them
Money isn't actually physically worth anything - everyone and everything says that it is the most necessary and precious thing so it has become just that
Intrinsic human quality - every society since humans were intelligent enough to form them has been centred on one form of currency or another. In some places, money is a digital number uploaded into a database that doesn't exist in the physical world, and can be converted into paper and metal coins by way of a plastic card with a microchip in it that goes into a box built into the side of a building. And in other places, money is a goat.
- humans will always have to place value on something to drive them
There are a thousand guards guarding one king, but because they are told he is in charge, they are unable to take control, although they are more numerous and powerful together. Power resides where people believe it resides. Belief is more influential than proof because it is easier, less harsh or difficult to accept, and can be altered to people's personal preferences. This is why religion exists and why people are so fiercely protective of it, disproving someones religion is tantamount to tearing their perception of the world in half, which is obviously terrifying.
Value is a social relationship
Commodification of classic art - the Mona Lisa - everyone thinks it is great BECAUSE everyone thinks it is great. There is just an objective consensus that it has a quality, fuelled primarily by its fame.
Banksy - messages about anti-capitalist thinking have been taken and printed and sold on mugs and pillows and shit. People have been so blinded by feckless and empty adoration for something they know is popular they have missed the entire point of what they are looking at. Some of the people who have paid thousands to own the work are actively working against the anti consumer message of it in their daily lives. Ripping people off on loans and mortgages all day in a bank and coming home to a Banksy painting hanging in your living room is almost hilariously ironic and equally tragic, that the art has become castrated and diluted by its own popularity.
There is no relationship between production value and sale value - a name/brand will always drive prices up because people will pay much more to ensure that other people know that they can afford whatever brand it is. Consciously or not, we are conditioned to assume that because one jumper has an Italian mans name on it, it is a more prestigious jumper that will improve our lives, improve how others see us, ultimately completing us. And when it inevitably doesn't, we become bored and desire some other thing that definitely will.
Christmas has gone through several forms of commodification for one reason or another:
- Begun as a Pagan festival celebrating the winter solstice - as less work had to be done in the winter, and the people had the spring weather to look forward to
- Norse culture also had a festival called Yule, based around Odin going on a hunt through the sky
- Christianity eventually took over the time period and absorbed most of these other western religions into itself and redeveloped the time as Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ
- As society became less controlled by religion, the meaning of Christmas began to focus on presents and the commodities of Christmas, and this has continued and amplified significantly in the last few decades - almost all religious imagery is absent from Christmas celebrations and half the people who celebrate it call it Xmas - the beginning of a new phase where capitalism has taken the place of the church absorbing all those religions and cultures, and successfully usurped the holiday and converted all its followers.
THEORIES for further research
- Character Mask
- Commodity (Marxism)
- Exchange Value
- False Consciousness
- Law of Value
- Labour Theory of Value
- Real Prices and Ideal Prices
- Reification
- Relations of Production
- Use Value
- Value Form
Reification - similar - giving non physical/real things attributes and worth, such as fear or the concept of money etc - e.g. a wedding ring being more than a band of metal, now a physical signifier of love and commitment
Warhols soup cans - they were being printed in his studio "The Factory", he wasn't even physically doing the printing - is the work even his?
He produced them like this to illustrate that they are worthless - but people saw his name on them and immediately imprinted a value and a worth on them because his work was famous - they don't care what he was trying to say or what the message of the work is, as long as it is labelled in a way that will make them look or feel more important for having paid through the nose for it, it has a much higher value.
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