Diamonds Are a Capitalists Best Friends essays

Diamonds Are a Capitalist's Best Friends essays Everyone knows that we as humans need only a few material things for survival (food, clothing, and shelter). Yet, the capitalist society in which we live today is centered around the production, marketing, and exchange of commodities (no matter how trivial and useless they may be). It follows then that capitalists, in their constant search for profit, must engineer reasons for us to buy their products. They must convince us that while yes, we can live without them, we cannot live happily without them. They do this by attributing seemingly magical personalitites to those products. This fetish, which is exemplified in every diamond ring, converts societal relations involving people into relations involving things. Since labor has become abstract, we are no longer conscious of the methods of human labor that produces commodities, and we are thus left with only the market factions to classify the value of these goods-and the qualities of our lives. To deepen our understanding, let us first examine what a commodity is and why its so special. A commodity is anything produced for exchange-by its properties it satisfies some type of human desire. The odd thing about a commodity is it leads a double life so to speak. It is a product of labour made not just for use, but for exchange. Once a product has been put up for sale it obtains an attribute that is not naturally there -exchangeablitiy. For example, a diamond can be used for its asthetics or to cut glass (its use-value), or it can be sold for money(its value). Interestingly, before capitalism, production in most parts of the world was production for use. Aristotle said that of everthing we posses there are two uses. One is the proper use, the second is improper. A sandal, for example, is properly used as footwear. But this same sandle can also be exchanged for food or money. It is true, exchange is also a use; but it is not the proper or primary way a sand...