{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","id":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","uuid":"50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title":"Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"digitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2021022153","isbns":["2021022153","9781032119182","9781032119205","9781003222149","2405518376"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":343,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/50b7f922-b940-4a05-8eb0-c4dc0d8ec9ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":82,"pdf_page":96,"physical_index":96,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d63e2de5789cc6bbdde39e6c3ee8642c08151cfb32d2a1c64ebc946ee20182ac"},"chapter":"DIGITAL CAPITALISM","content":"The reified society also brings about reified language. Indicative of this phenomenon is the presence of reified language in the Oxford Dictionary: for example, it defines communication as the “imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium”.<sup>1</sup> Exchange is a social relation, in a specific amount of a commodity is exchanged for a particular amount of another commodity: x commodity A = y commodity B (Marx 1867, 163). In communication, you do not expect an “exchange” of 10 words for 10 words. Indeed, one person might utter a sentence consisting of ten words and another person might answer with just one word or a sentence consisting of 20 words. Language is in general, not a commodity, although its objectification can be turned into commodities, as the case of a book that is sold for a particular amount of money shows. The example shows that the commodity form in capitalism not just reifies social relations, but as part of reified social relations also reifies communication and language that mediate the production and reproduction of social relations.\n\nIn the English language, “exchange” stems from the Latin word excambiāre, the Anglo-Norman word eschanger, and the Old French verb eschangier<sup>2</sup>. During the rise of Mercantilism in the 16th century, “exchange” was established as a common word for the “[p]ractice of merchants or lenders meeting to exchange bill of debt” and “building for mercantile business”.<sup>3</sup> Fetishism makes the particular appear as general. Communication is a general feature of all societies, whereas exchange only exists in societies shaped by class, markets, and divisions of labour. The linguistic conflation of exchange as commodity trade and exchange as communication creates the impression that markets are a general necessary feature of all societies. As a consequence of capitalist fetishism’s impact on language, the Oxford Dictionary defines exchange simultaneously as a “short conversation or an argument” and “the trading of a particular commodity or commodities”, a “system or market in which commercial transactions involving currency, shares, etc. can be carried out”, and the “changing of money to its equivalent in the currency of another country”.<sup>4</sup>\n\nLukács wrote History and Class Consciousness longest chapter “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” in 1923. Given that Nazis had not yet come to power and just five years had passed since the Russian Revolution, Lukács was at this point of time rather optimistic about the potentials of proletarian revolutions. He argues that the bourgeoisie has necessary false consciousness, whereas the proletariat does not automatically have revolutionary consciousness, but has the possibility to see through fetishism. Lukács’ political optimism is for example present in formulations such as the ones that the “consciousness of the proletariat is still fettered by reification” (HCC, 76) or capitalism keeps “the bourgeoisie imprisoned within this immediacy while forcing the proletariat to go beyond it” (HCC, 164).\n\n82\n\nTheorists\n\n1 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/communication\n\n2 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exchange\n\n3 https://www.etymonline.com/word/exchange\n\n4 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exchange","previous_page":81,"next_page":83}