Commodity Fetishism Quotes

Benjamin does attempt to decode their subjective experience, but he does this within social and historical limits, insisting that subjects inhabiting capitalist modernity, exposed to the workings of commodity fetishism, have become objects, objectified, susceptible to processes of commodification (of their labour-power, of the culture they consume). ~ Beatrice Hanssen

She pulled the phone back to look at her photo, then, drawn by its ruthless intensity, kissed the image. Her lips left semen smears on the screen. Commodity fetishism at its finest. ~ David Cronenberg

American culture is a sheep culture - long on talk about individualism, but even longer on absolute conformity. Most still believe that individuality is based on which model car you like best - commodity identity, a selection of personalities on a shelf full of products approved by the Federal Identity Administration. I'm a Taurus aspiring to be a Lexus. ~ Stan Goff

Perhaps the grumbler will object on the ground that he considers p a vital commodity, much more important than q, and that therefore the production of p should be expanded and that of q restricted. If this is really the meaning of his criticism, he is at variance with the valuations of the consumers. He throws off his mask and shows his dictatorial aspirations. Production should not be directed by the wishes of the public but by his own despotic discretion. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Deep down I knew that if Hell existed, it was a real place full of ruthless, venal people, like the commodity pits at the Chicago Board of Trade, Disney World, or oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court. ~ Richard Dooling

If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Democracy is not a commodity for import and export. ~ Prince Hassan Bin Talal

Social Ecology:
The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man ... But it was not until organic community relation ... dissolved into market relationships that the planet itself was reduced to a resource for exploitation. This centuries-long tendency finds its most exacerbating development in modern capitalism. Owing to its inherently competitive nature, bourgeois society not only pits humans against each other, it also pits the mass of humanity against the natural world. Just as men are converted into commodities, so every aspect of nature is converted into a commodity, a resource to be manufactured and merchandised wantonly. ... The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital. ~ Murray Bookchin

I was a commodity, like a hot dog. It was like hot dogs and Betty Hutton. ~ Betty Hutton

While the people of Madrid seem to have resigned to selling almost anything - the one thing they have never given up on so far - is time. It is the one commodity that is never sold and always shared. ~ Lauren Klarfeld

Christ is a most precious commodity, he is better than rubies or the most costly pearls; and we must part with our old gold, with our shining gold, our old sins, our most shining sins, or we must perish forever. Christ is to be sought and bought with any pains, at any price; we can not buy this gold too dear. He is a jewel more worth than a thousand worlds, as all know who have him. Get him, and get all; miss him and miss all. ~ Thomas Brooks

Despite the chronic shortages of almost every good and commodity, there was no shortage of paper, since everyone in the neighborhood was required to write confessions on a periodic basis. Even ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

Economic recession?" "Well, you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing that custom-built planets are something of a luxury commodity, you see ... ~ Douglas Adams

Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no finite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity-even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest-could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end. ~ Brady Udall

We must change life,' the poet [Rimbaud] had written, and so the Situationists set out to transform everyday life in the modern world through a comprehensive program that included above all else the construction of 'situations'
defined in 1958 as moments of life 'concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and a play of events'
but that also necessary entailed the supersession of philosophy, the realization of art, the abolition of politics, and the fall of the 'spectacle-commodity economy. ~ Tom McDonough

First off, the crude oil market, unlike every other commodity in America, is virtually unregulated. ~ Peter DeFazio

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability. ~ John D. Rockefeller

Acceptance is such an important commodity, some have called it "the first law of personal growth". ~ Peter McWilliams

Time is a perishable commodity. ~ David Hume

But it is important to realize we are all trapped in mental constructs, and so we separate ourselves from reality; the whole world loses its aliveness-or, rather, we lose our ability to sense that aliveness, the sacredness of nature. When we approach nature through the conceptualizing mind, we see a forest as a commodity, a concept. We no longer see it for what it truly is, but for what we want to use it as. It is reduced. This is how it becomes possible for humans to destroy the planet without realizing what they are doing. ~ Eckhart Tolle

He ran a finger down my cheek. "Time is a commodity right now, Red. Wait too long and it might be too late."
I swallowed hard. Went still as my stomach clenched with dread. Hadn't Maisie said almost those exact same words to me in New York when she'd encouraged me to admit my feelings to Ada? "I know."
He leaned forward and placed another soft kiss on my lips. When he pulled away, he held my gaze. "Soon, Sabina. ~ Jaye Wells

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
- Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993 ~ Toni Morrison

If they survive, today's children will inherit a world that our fathers and grandfathers have ravaged, where the seas are acidic cesspools that the whales have fled, where rain forests are Indian memories never to return, and where human greed has plundered Mother Earth's innards and turned human genes into factories for profit. They will inherit a diminished planet where fresh water is increasingly rare, and where fresh air is a commodity ... We live in a world that fears and hates its young. How else can one explain the bequest of such a foul, polluted, and hollow inheritance? ~ Mumia Abu-Jamal

Alan said he'd known what to expect from de St Jorre from the kick-off, since in his preface this cretin speaks of banned books being burnt in the same way heretics were burnt by religious tyrants. Alan was quick to denounce the cruel inhumanity of liberal fuckwits who wantonly blurred the lines between human life and products of a literary culture that had yet to escape its commodity form. ~ Stewart Home

Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not. ~ Michael Dell

Time is the only commodity in life that cannot be bought, sold, borrowed, given out as a gift and it cannot be inherited. ~ Sunday Adelaja

...To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity, "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity of "man" attached to the tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rovers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed... ~ Karl Polanyi

We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility; but there is one high poetic fancy in the New Atlantis that stays in the mind after all its fancies and inventions have been forgotten. In the New Atlantis, an island kingdom lying in very distant seas, the only commodity of external trade is light: Bacon's own special light, the light of understanding. ~ Peter Medawar

This state of affairs is not inevitable. Humans were able to employ science and law to transform common holdings into a commodity and then into capital; we also have the ability to reverse this path, transforming some of our now overabundant capital into renewed commons. ~ Fritjof Capra

In the West, we got the message that it's not cool to wear ivory. It's not cool to utilize products from these wonderful species. They are not commodities. We need the whole world to join hands in getting this message now, particularly countries in Asia and certain communities that have not been educated about this. They have not had the campaigns that we had. ~ Patrick Bergin

It is also painful to see that the struggle against hunger and malnutrition is hindered by market priorities, the primacy of profit, which have reduced foodstuffs to a commodity like any other, subject to speculation, also of a financial nature, The hungry remain, at the street corner, and ask to be recognized as citizens, to receive a healthy diet. We ask for dignity, not for charity. ~ Pope Francis

Brotherly love is not a tangible commodity. We cannot touch it or weigh it, smell it of taste it. Yet it is a reality; it can be creative, it can be fostered, it can be made a dynamic power. The Master who has it in his Lodge and his brethren will find that Lodge and brethren give it back to him. The Master too worried over the cares of his office to express friendliness need never wonder why his Lodge seems too cold to his effort. ~ Carl H. Claudy

The followers of Jesus, though, did not kill their offspring, even when it would have made economic or social sense to do so.6 This is still distinctively Christian in a world that increasingly sees children as, at best, a commodity to be controlled and, at worst, a nuisance to be contained. ~ Russell D. Moore

Experience is often a brutal teacher. Experience eats up you most valuable commodity:time. Learning from experience can eat up years. It can steal an entire stage of life. ~ Andy Stanley

Well, let's consider the value of the dollar. Ultimately, logically, the dollar has no value at all. It's a piece of paper. It only has value because we say it has value, and because we agree on a system of bartering that maintains that value. Great care is taken to keep the value of the dollar strong. Smart guys in Washington and New York lose sleep over this. And we all watched what happend in Argentina a few years ago. We watched what happened when the value of currency declined rapidly. It's not a good thing. Sex is like that. God is concerned with the value of sex staying high. It's important to a person's health, a family's health, and a society's health. But like anything, sex can be cheapened in our minds, so we don't hold it in high esteem. God doesn't think this is a good thing. Stuff God doesn't think is good is called sin.
"What happens when sex is cheaped?" somebody asked.
A lot happens. The main thing is there is no sacred physical territory associated with commitment. There can still be emotional territory, but there isn't anything physical, experiential, that a man and a woman have only with each other. Sleeping around does something to the heart, to the mind. It leaves less commodity to spend on a sacred mate. But all of that sounds pretty fluffy. Let me break it down into practical stuff. Women saying no to men, not letting men have sex with them, causes men to step up. If, in order to have sex with them, women demanded you got a job and shaved eve ~ Donald Miller

I too often allow people to become a sterile commodity to be bartered in the service of my greed, and in doing something so absurdly reckless I foolishly barter away everything that meets my need. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Unsettled heart. The fetishism of secrecy. These people understood - as I did - the back alleys of the soul, whispers and shadows, money slipping from hand to hand, the password, the code, the second self, all the hidden consolations that lifted ~ Donna Tartt

Experience has proved to me that real money made in speculating has been in commitments in a stock or commodity showing a profit right from the start. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore

Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.
But you can't buy fighting spirit. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Time isn't a commodity, something you pass around like cake. Time is the substance of life. When anyone asks you to give your time, they're really asking for a chunk of your life. ~ Antoinette Bosco

Irene sighed. "...But I do believe the Library wants an answer to what`s happened. Why else would they call you in?"
" An answer, certainly," Vale agreed. " But the truth? That might be a very dangerous commodity. ~ Genevieve Cogman

This kindness, this stupid kindness, is what is most truly human in a human being. It is what sets man apart, the highest achievement of his soul. No, it says, life is not evil!
This kindness is both senseless and wordless. It is instinctive, blind. When Christianity clothed it in the teachings of the Church Fathers, it began to fade; its kernel became a husk. It remains potent only while it is dumb and senseless, hidden in the living darkness of the human heart – before it becomes a tool or commodity in the hands of preachers, before its crude ore is forged into the gilt coins of holiness. It is as simple as life itself. Even the teachings of Jesus deprived it of its strength.
But, as I lost faith in good, I began to lose faith even in kindness. It seemed as beautiful and powerless as dew. What use was it if it was not contagious?
How can one make a power of it without losing it, without turning it into a husk as the Church did? Kindness is powerful only while it is powerless. If Man tries to give it power, it dims, fades away, loses itself, vanishes. ~ Vasily Grossman