{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":28,"pdf_page":28,"physical_index":28,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"8ea2643aed1d57e044bc017ca8407747628f4c8c2035112f7ab9a067092754cc"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"The development of commodity production had one important efect. It systematically distorted people's understanding of reality through what Marx called the \"fetishism of commodities\":\n\nThe . . . relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour . . . A definite social relation between men assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands.17\n\nPeople speak of \"the power of money\", as if its power did not come from the human labour for which it is a token; or of the \"needs of the market\", as if the market was anything more than an arrangement for linking together the concrete acts of labour of different human beings. Such mystical attitudes lead people to ascribe social ills to things beyond human control-the process which the young Marx had called \"alienation\" and which some Marxists since Marx have called \"reification\". Simply seeing through such mysticism does not in itself deal with the social ills. As Marx noted, simply arriving at a scientific understanding of the character of existing society leaves it intact just as \"after the discovery of the component gases of air, the atmosphere itself remained unaltered\" .18 But without seeing through the fetishism, conscious action to transform society cannot take place. Hence the importance of grasping the distinction between use value and exchange value and of grounding value in socially necessary labour.\n\nExploitation and surplus value\n\nWe do not only live in a world of commodity production. We live in a world where control of most of that production is concentrated in relatively few hands. In 2008 the sales of the world's biggest 2,000 companies equalled about half of total world output.19 If we assume that around ten directors sit on the board of each of the multinationals, then the out of a world population of over six billion, a mere 20,000 people exercise decisive control over the creation of wealth; in fact, the figure will be considerably lower than that because most of the directors will sit on the boards of more than one firm. Production, of course, is not carried out simply by the multinationals. Alongside them are a mass of nationally based medium-sized firms that have not achieved multinational status, and alongside them exist an even larger number of small firms, some little more than family operations employing perhaps a couple of people. But, even taking all these into consideration, only a small percentage of the world's population control the means of production responsible for producing the major portion of its wealth.\n\n28\n\nUnderstanding the System: Marx and Beyond","previous_page":27,"next_page":29}