The Illusion of Things

In capitalist society, relationships between people do not appear as relationships between people. Instead, they appear as relationships between things. This is the essence of what Karl Marx called commodity fetishism—one of the most powerful and misunderstood ideas in Marxist thought.

Under capitalism, we do not simply produce goods because we need them. We produce commodities to be sold on the market. And once everything is produced for exchange, the social relationships behind production become hidden. The worker who makes the coat, the miner who extracts the iron, the driver who transports the goods—all disappear behind the price tag.

It begins to look as if commodities have value in themselves, as if the objects possess some magical property that gives them worth. But in reality, value comes from human labour. It is people who create value, not things.

Marx wrote that it appears as if “the thing itself possesses the ability to establish production relations.” This is the great illusion of capitalism. We begin to believe that markets decide everything, prices decide everything, money decides everything. Human beings disappear from the picture.

This illusion reaches its peak with money. Money was originally created simply to make exchange easier. But over time, money began to appear as if it creates value by itself.

Marxist philosopher István Mészáros explained this perfectly when he said that people begin to believe money creates more money by itself—self-expanding value. Workers, machines, factories, and raw materials are all seen as secondary, while money is treated as the true creator of wealth.

This is why capitalism often seems upside down. The worker who produces everything is poor, while the person who owns money becomes rich simply by investing it. It looks like money is working and people are not. But in reality, it is always labour that creates wealth.

The domination of commodities does not just affect economics—it affects how we see the world and ourselves. Production becomes highly specialised. One worker tightens one bolt, another enters one number into a computer, another drives a truck. No one sees the whole process anymore.

Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács described this as a situation where specialisation destroys “every image of the whole.” Society becomes fragmented. People feel disconnected from what they produce, from each other, and even from themselves.

Work no longer feels like creation. It feels like survival.

And when crises happen—prices rise, jobs disappear, governments cut spending—it appears as if some mysterious force called “the market” is responsible. The market becomes like a god: invisible, powerful, unquestionable.

But the market is nothing more than the collective result of human decisions, human labour, and human systems.

Commodity fetishism is experienced differently by different classes.

According to Lukács, the ruling class can never fully escape commodity fetishism because their entire existence depends on capitalism continuing. For them, capitalism appears natural, eternal, and inevitable.

But the working class is in a unique position. Workers produce everything, yet own nothing. They create the wealth of society, yet struggle to survive. Their lives constantly reveal the contradiction at the heart of capitalism.

When workers strike, production stops.

When workers organise, governments listen.

When workers unite, society changes.

Through struggle, workers begin to realise something powerful: the system depends on them, not the other way around.

This is what Lukács called revolutionary consciousness—the moment when workers stop seeing themselves as isolated individuals and begin to see themselves as a class with collective power.

Commodity fetishism explains why capitalism makes people feel powerless. Everything seems controlled by prices, markets, corporations, and money. Individuals feel small and replaceable.

But the same system that hides workers’ power also depends entirely on their labour.

Factories do not run themselves.

Machines do not create value by themselves.

Money does not grow by itself.

Behind every commodity, every building, every road, every phone, every piece of food—there is human labour.

And once workers realise this, the illusion begins to break.

They begin to see that history is not made by markets.

It is made by people.

And when people act together, even the most powerful system can change.

Commodity fetishism explains why capitalism makes us feel powerless—but class struggle shows us where our power truly lies.