Reification (Marxism)
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Reification (German: Verdinglichung, literally: "over-thing-ification") is the consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had human or living existence and abilities; at the same time it implies the thingification of social relations.
The concept is related to, but differs from, Marx's theories of alienation and commodity fetishism.
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[edit] Development and significance of the concept
Marx didn't use the concept much[1], in fact it was developed mostly by Georg Lukács in "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat", part of his book History and Class Consciousness. The concept of reification has also been present in the works of the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, for example in Horkheimer and Adorno's, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and in the works of Herbert Marcuse. Others that have written about this point include Gajo Petrović, Raya Dunayevskaya, Raymond Williams, Axel Honneth and Slavoj Žižek.
Petrović, in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, defines it as:
The act (or result of the act) of transforming human properties, relations and actions into properties, relations and actions of man‑produced things which have become independent (and which are imagined as originally independent) of man and govern his life. Also transformation of human beings into thing‑like beings which do not behave in a human way but according to the laws of the thing‑world. Reification is a ‘special’ case of ALIENATION, its most radical and widespread form characteristic of modem capitalist society.
[edit] Examples of Reification
The introduction of the term labor in the 1800s as an economic commodity, when before it meant the everyday life of work.
Capital, the objectification of desire in currency.
Other examples of reification would be when human products are misconceived as “facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will”. The "Market" as an autonomous entity guiding economic life is a good example of reification, according to McGill sociology professor Steven Rytina. [3]
[edit] Criticism
French philosopher Louis Althusser criticized in his 1965 article Marxism and Humanism, what he called "An ideology of reification that sees 'things' everywhere in human relations"[4] . Althusser's critique derives from his theory of the epistemological break, which finds that Marx had a big theoretical and methodological change between his early writings and his mature ones.
The concept of reification comes from chapter one of Das Kapital, Marx's most mature work; however, Althusser finds in it an important influence from the similar concept of alienation developed in The German Ideology and in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.
[edit] References
- ^ See this search at the Marxists Internet Archive
- ^ Gajo Petrović, A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, edited by Tom Bottomore, Laurence Harris, V.G. Kiernan, Ralph Miliband (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 411-413; [1]
- ^ Berger, Peter, & Luckmann, Thomas. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor/Doubleday.
- ^ Althusser, Louis; "Marxism and Humanism" in For Marx, p. 230 - endnote 7, [2]
[edit] External links
- History & Class Consciousness, by Georg Lukács.
- Reification of People and the Fetishism of Commodities, by Raya Dunayevskaya.
- Reification, by Gajo Petrović
- Reification: A marxist perspective by Val Murris
- Althusser's "Humanism and Marxism" in For Marx
[edit] Further reading
- Arato, Andrew 1972: Lukács’s Theory of Reification’.
- Bewes, Timothy 2002: Reification, or The Anxiety of Late Capitalism
- Gabel, Joseph 1962: La réification.
- Goldmann, Lucien 1959: ‘Réification’. In Recherches dialectiques.
- Honneth, Axel 2005: "Reification -- A Recognition-Theoretical View," The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at University of California-Berkeley
- Kangrga, Milan 1968: ‘Was ist Verdinglichung?’
- Löwith, Karl 1932 (1982): Max Weber and Karl Marx.
- Lukács, Georg 1923 (1971): History and Class Consciousness.
- Rubin, I. I. 1928 (1972): Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value.
- Schaff, Adam 1980: Alienation as a Social Phenomenon.
- Tadić, Ljubomir 1969: ‘Bureaucracy—Reified Organization’. In M. Marković and G. Petrović eds. Praxis.
