This is why it is actually wrong to assume that Marx is criticizing the production and exchange of things per se, because not every object produced is a commodity, and not every exchange is necessarily a commodity. of the specific kind described by Marx; Rather, Marx critiques the particular social relations that underlie the production and exchange of things in a capitalist society. Likewise, it is erroneous to conclude that commodity fetishism refers to an obsessive fascination with the objective form of the commodity itself. Rather, the fetishism to which Marx refers is, in essence, the fetishization of money as a substitute for an abstract human labor force that has achieved "representative autonomy", and thus constitutes a human social construct that has achieved autonomy. apparently independent. existence which turns around and exerts on its creators a palpable force which appears autonomous to them. Thus, for Marx, “fetishism” designates above all the “secret” of the process of exchange of qualitatively different objects through their reduction to a common denominator in the form of money which facilitates this exchange. But money only intervenes in this exchange to the extent that it represents work, which is the true source of exchange value for

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