Sign fetishism as a form of commodity fetish-ism

Abstract

In the conditions of late capitalism, commodity fetishism necessarily takes the form of iconic fetishism. The production of trademark goods is generated by the basic contradictions of capitalism – between the social nature of production and the private way of appropriating its conditions and results, between the universal, generic essence of man and the partial way of its realization – and at the same time significantly masks them. Advertising, fashion, media, and the cultural industry act as mechanisms that produce not just goods and meanings, but the very "subjectivity" of the consumer: the reorientation of desire from political action to consumption, the illusion of social mobility, and the depoliticization of class conflict. Based on K. Marx's theory of commodity fetishism and the concept of simulacrum. Baudrillard analyzes iconic fetishism as a historically developed form of trademark, operating at the level of signs and identities. In contrast to Baudrillard's thesis about the ultimate autonomy of the simulacrum, a materialistic interpretation of hyperreality is proposed: it does not replace the relations of production, but only masks them with maximum efficiency. Criticism of iconic fetishism unfolds on three levels: political, economic, ideological, and subjective.