Born out of the alcoholic fever dreams of a post graduate existential ennui, The Fish considers what it means to find a stranger in the alps. Brought to you by Pedialyte and Beef Jerkey, the breakfast of champions.
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The
collected writings of Karl Marx form the basis on which his intellectual heirs
have erected a complex and all-pervading analytical didactic. Marxism as a
didactic explains foreign policy through the lens of history, with the economic
stage of history in which the world finds itself at a particular time
determining the way that nation-states interact with one another. This didactic
is not always useful for analysis of international relations as its rigidity
prevents its adaptation for changing circumstances – as long as the analyst can
determine the correct stage of history for the situation, the predicted foreign
policy outcome is largely a foregone conclusion. Despite the rigidity of
Marxist didactic when applied to foreign policy, certain of Marx’s concepts do
lend themselves to operationalization as methods of foreign policy analysis. By
focusing more on the intellectual mechanisms of Marx’s analysis, what were
previously purely tools of economic analysis can be stripped down and adapted
to foreign policy analysis.
One
of these intellectual mechanisms is the concept of commodity fetishism,
described in volume one of Das Kapital.
Marx posits that as capitalist society develops, human social interaction becomes
increasingly distorted and eventually disappears altogether. The reason for
this disappearance is because in a fully capitalist society, people are no
longer people, but rather an
expression of commodities, defined by
the value and interaction of the items they produce. Marx explains that rather than
flowing directly from person to person, capitalist social interactions must
flow through a commodity. This flow, rendered in abbreviation for simplicity,
reads
P
– C – P
The
commodity which interrupts the P – P interaction is the fetish;[1]
an inanimate object imbued with intrinsic value by the participants in that
interaction. The fetish itself may have no intrinsic value, yet once value is imbued
by the participants it serves to shape and define their interaction. Marx uses
the example of crafting a table out of wood; after the carpenter finishes his
work, the wood of the table remains wood, unchanged in its basic form. However,
the table itself is now a commodity, given an extra dose of worth out of belief
alone.[2] It
is this idea of belief, as expressed by Charles de Brosses[3]
and discussed by Auguste Comte[4]
that introduces the element of illogical reasoning into the interaction between
the two persons in the equation above. The basic analytical mechanism behind
the theory of commodity fetishism is that something comes between the two
actors in the equation which distorts what would otherwise be the logical
outcome – the commodity.
To
take this basic analytical mechanism and recreate it as a foreign-policy
focused analytical mechanism requires a re-definition of terms that nonetheless
retains the same purpose as Marx’s theory. Instead of a person, replace P with A - for Actor; a term denoting any participant in foreign policy
from the individual through the nation-state to the multilateral organization.
For the purposes of this paper, the focus will largely be on nation-state and
multilateral actors. Instead of the commodity C, substitute the underlying concept of the fetish as an object or
idea imbued with intrinsic value by the participants in the equation. Thus, the
equation that was expressed by Marx as P
– C – P is now written
A
– F – A
Like
Marx’s commodities, the foreign policy fetishes serve to distort what should be
the logical interaction of the constituent actors. Major theories of
international relations predicate their predictive powers upon the notion that
the participants in the international system are by and large logical; the
fetish helps explain why they are anything but.
So
what exactly is the fetish, and how
does it serve to frame or distort what should theoretically be a logical
interaction between actors in the international system? In the equation A – F – A the fetish is unlikely to be a
physical commodity, as Marx asserts with his mechanism P – C – P. The fetish is rather an idea or set of imperatives
against which an actor assesses foreign policy decisions which can lead to an
otherwise illogical decision. The
predictive and analytical power of A – F
– A lies in assessing what a particular actor’s fetish is at any given
time, then assessing a past or prospective decision against it. By being aware
of what a particular actor’s fetish is, an observer is able to adapt their
analysis so that they are able to predict the illogical outcome of the interaction – the logical outcome in light
of belief in a fetish. This formula does not apply to all actors in all
situations, but rather serves best when used in conjunction with established
concepts of foreign policy analysis to reduce blind spots.
If I'm wrong, prove it.
[1]
Karl Marx, Capital,
Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Pelican Classics, 1976): 163-177.
[2]
Ibid. 163-4.
[3]
Charles de Brosses, Du culte des dieux fétiches, ou Parallèle de
l'ancienne religion de l'Egypte avec la religion actuelle de Nigritie (Paris,
1760)
[4]
Harriet Martineau, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, vol. III
(London: George Bell & Sons, 1896): 12. http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/comte/Philosophy3.pdf
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