THE INSANEST CAPITALIST MYSTIFICATION: ABOUT THE RELATION BETWEEN FETISHISM AND FICTITIOUS CAPITAL
Name: BERNARDO GOIS FRAGUAS
Publication date: 16/12/2022
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ADRIANO LOPES ALMEIDA TEIXEIRA | Co-advisor * |
| MAURICIO DE SOUZA SABADINI | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ADRIANO LOPES ALMEIDA TEIXEIRA | Co advisor * |
| GUSTAVO MOURA DE CAVALCANTI MELLO | Internal Examiner * |
| MAURICIO DE SOUZA SABADINI | Advisor * |
Summary: The present study analyzes the relationship between fetishism and the
category of fictitious capital within the work book Capital, by Karl Marx,
including three books that composed it. In this context, Marx, in this work,
exposes the most fundamental determinations that define determined social
formation as capitalist. But beyond that, Marx also seeks to demonstrate and
explain the process in which these determinations appear in a mystified way
in the immediacy of phenomena. Thus, what explains this mystification is
exactly the phenomenon of fetishism, presented by Marx right at the beginning
of his work. Fetishism, therefore, permeates the entire exposition made
throughout the three books of Capital and becomes the fundament of the
process of autonomization of the functional forms of capital. In this
process, we start with capital in general and, as fetishism progresses, there
is the emergence of forms derived from money capital. Thus, first there is
interest-bearing capital and then, with another step forward in the process
of autonomizing forms, fictitious capital. At first, Marx considers
interest-bearing capital as the paroxysm of fetishism, however, such a
statement raises the question of how fictitious capital, as a form derived
from interest-bearing capital, would then relate to the fetishism. For this,
it is necessary to analyze how the transition from interest-bearing capital
to fictitious capital takes place. In this process, it will be possible to
verify that the fictitious capital is constituted in pure form without
content. Therefore, while interest-bearing capital still presents a duality
between its expression in totality which includes the content and its
fetishistic expression its form of manifestation , fictitious capital,
in turn, is pure fetishistic expression as a form without content. Fictitious
capital is thus the ultimate expression of the fetishism of interest-bearing
capital itself. And is this fetishism that explains the passage from
interest-bearing capital to fictitious capital. Thus, fictitious capital is
the most insane form of mystification of capitalist society.
