Marx in the Farmers’ Market
Lugo Rudner 1
Marx in the Farmers’ Market
Sarah Lugo Rudner
Professor Ted Gournelos
Critical Frameworks CMC 300-1
14 October 2011
Marx in the Farmers’ Market
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Abstract:
Instances of commodity fetishism are all around us and are especially prevalent in spaces that
usually go unnoticed. In studying one specific space, the local Winter Park Farmers Market, I
have noticed that many of the customers have no idea what they are actually buying. At Rollins
College, just yards from the Winter Park Farmers Market, I constantly witness students waking
up earlier than usual just to get their hands on their organic fruit and vegetables for the week. I
constantly ask the question why buy the food at the Farmers’ Market? What is the lure or
significance? Concepts of Karl Marx’s theory of “commodity fetishism” are manifest in the
consumerism and consumers of the Winter Park Farmers’ Market. The customers are consuming
these products at the market while blind to the social exchange value and blind to the
exploitation of labor.
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“Organic, homegrown, and healthy” are all ways in things I hear when asking students
why they wanted to buy their food from the farmers market as opposed to the grocery stores.
Many replied that they thought the food they bought at the farmers market was of better quality
or came straight from local farms. “Plus its trendy!” one student explained. It was clear that the
subjects had neither idea of the origin of the food nor how the food becomes available to them.
Karl Marx theory can be applied to the space of the local Winter Park Farmers’ Market because
the consumerism, social inherent value and alienation that takes place. Marx would label the
scene with a term he calls a “commodity fetish” for several reasons.
When consumers go to the Winter Park Farmers Market, they are there to buy an object
with physical properties that scream “organic and trendy” because they are bought at the Winter
Park Farmers’ Market. The students are thinking about how that product will give them social
gain in being able to say “Oh I bought these bananas at the farmers market!” In a sense the value
of the objects is purely social; the students do not truly value the bananas for their organic-ness
or local origins, but because they give the purchaser social merit.
Use-value
I know that students are buying the commodities for social weight because when asking
the students more about the products they were buying. None of them give any information about
the origins of the produce. These fruits and vegetables are products of labor but none of the
consumers know, realize, or can conceptualize that when they unconsciously buy the goods. The
students at the market only have a relationship with the vendors or the marketplace from whom
they are buying the fruits and vegetables and do not conceptualize any of the human labor behind
the product. Regarding the existence of the commodities such as those at the farmers market,
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Karl Marx states that “the value- relation between the products of labor which stamps them as
commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material
relations arising there from” (664).
It should be noted that the students’ idea that the fruits and vegetables are organic and
locally grown just for them is also their oblivion to the labor value. Students think that there is no
labor going into the product, the items are purely going through the route of nature to
commodity. This is classic to what Marx would call a misperception between “use-value” and
“exchange-value”. Mostly, the students believe they are buying products that are made for direct
consumption (use-value) when in reality they are buying products that are [no pun intended]
made for the market (exchange-value). These consumers are oblivious to the actual formation
and process of how those products came to be. The students don’t think about who picked the
food, or even where the food came from. They solely believe that its physical property i.e., being
sold at the Farmers’ market, thus labels it better, healthier, and home grown.
The different products, for example the bananas, are given different value by students.
For example, why one student would want to buy the bananas at the Winter Park Farmers Market
as opposed to Publix. Marx would title the different bananas by their different value. For Marx,
something that has use-value is “riches” and something that has exchange-value is “value”. Thus
the Winter Park Farmers’ Market bananas are valuable because they can be exchanged and have
value for more than their raw material (social value). This contrasts with the Publix bananas that
are riches because they are useful solely for their raw material.
It is not that the consumer is buying the bananas because they are useful and necessary,
because often bananas can be bought on campus or at Publix. These consumers are buying the
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Farmers’ market bananas because they are able to be exchanged for social weight. Whereas,
buying bananas at Publix or on campus, would not have as much social value attached to them.
As humans applying these values to the objects, we are in turn determining the value of the
people. Publix or campus center bananas are not free of commodity fetishism either, but do not
have the symbolic value of the Farmers’ Market bananas. Relative to this, Marx would say that,
“When we bring the products of our labor into relation with each other as values,
it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous
human labor. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values
our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labor, the
different kinds of labor expended upon them. We are not aware of this,
nevertheless we do it. Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label
describing what it is. It is value; rather, that converts every product into social
hieroglyphic” (666).
Therefore, the sticker price of the banana has little to no relationship to the true value of human
labor involved. Equally, the consumer has no relationship with the worker. The greater the
distance between consumer and laborer, the greater is the gap between the realities of bourgeois
and the proletariat.
Alienation and Labor
It is clear that the students are certainly not buying the goods because of the labor of the
product and that it is important to note that the social value of the Farmers’ market bananas is
unseen and not a physical cost. Though is it important to emphasis that the true, unseen cost of
the bananas is labor. Labor has a price; there is a cost to hiring people to seed the bananas, grow
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the bananas, and/or harvest the bananas. Then there is a cost to hiring a worker to transport the
bananas to distributors. Those distributors then sell the bananas at markets such as the Winter
Park Farmers Market. This means that the customer only sees the individual relationship of the
exchange of money for bananas. Being blind to the value of human labor in the eyes of the
Farmers’ market patrons, they are paying for the thing not production of the thing.
In applying this concept to Karl Marx’s theory, we would say that the worker is
objectified, that labor is made into an object. For Marx, this is purely exploitation of the
proletariat by the bourgeoisie in that the working class creates all the wealth. The energy that the
laborer puts into the object has no value to the consumer. Marx calls this “alienation” because
the creator of the goods becomes separate from the objects he has created since the workers
become objects. “Workers become an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.
With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportions to the devaluation
of the world of men” (653). It is sad that students fall into “commodity fetishism” by feeding
into the system that keeps the poor farmer poor and the wealthy patrons rich.
Applying Marx in the Market
The commodity fetishism in the local Winter Park Farmers Market is the customer’s
consumption of exchange-value products by thinking they are use-value. In this sense, the
customers are giving “divine power to objects” (665) by saying that the bananas of the Winter
Park Farmers Market are better quality and come straight from the farms for them. Thus, the
customers think that they are getting a product that has been made for them, when in actuality the
product is a commodity. Not only is it a commodity, it has social exchange in that the consumers
benefit socially from the purchase.
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Works Cited
Leitch, V. B. (2010). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism (2nd ed., pp. 647-674). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (Original
work published circa 1967)