‘Fetishism and the Theory of Value: Reassessing Marx in the 21st Century’ by Desmond McNeill reviewed by John McKay

The history of Desmond McNeill’s fascinating and extraordinarily ambitious Fetishism and the Theory of Value covers nearly 40 years, and involved three stages, all of which are clearly reflected in the nature of the final result. The bulk of the work was first presented as a PhD thesis at the University of London, and in revised form makes up the 13 chapters that constitute the first four sections of the book. The author then sought, without success, to have his thesis published as a book, and eventually resorted to a self-published volume, the second stage. Finally, Geoff Harcourt, the author’s first tutor at Cambridge suggested that a revised and expanded version be published by Palgrave in its series Studies in the History of Economic Thought, bringing this long and laborious saga to an end. This third stage has involved the addition of two new chapters and a conclusion that are aimed at broadening and updating the earlier content. Many books began life as a doctoral thesis but this one has retained what might be called a ‘thesis style’ far more than most, including an over-reliance on long quotations. However, the project’s long gestation has resulted in some important positives, notably a perspective that is both broad and deep, borne of both time for reflection and a critical interaction with developments in the field over the life of the project.

McNeill is ambitious enough to attempt three major tasks in the evaluation of Marx’s contribution to our understanding of both value theory and what he insists is the closely related concept of fetishism. First, he presents a very thorough and instructive summary of Marx’s work in this area, including a detailed exposition of the stages in the development of his thought and the changes that took place over time in his conceptual framework. Secondly, he attempts to show that Marx’s contribution was much more comprehensive and original than is usually portrayed by many other Marxist scholars. Finally, he boldly asks whether the dramatic changes that have taken place in both the global economy and in society more generally are forcing us to consider whether some of Marx’s ideas need to be re-thought and perhaps reformulated.

The link between fetishism and value theory, which is central to the whole book, involves the devotion of no less than 7 chapters on the concept and ontology of fetishism. McNeill usefully details the origins of fetishism in Marx’s writings, the development of the concept over time in his later writings, and the contributions made by more recent Marxist scholars such as Paul Sweezy and Maurice Dobb. He concludes this section by asserting that commodity fetishism is necessary for the commodity economy, in that exchange value exists only by virtue of alienation and fetishism, but Marx’s position on the ontology of commodity fetishism – or indeed of value itself – is not stated very precisely. This is because, McNeill suggests, Marx lacked a coherent ontology of social being. Value is a complex phenomenon, and definitions have proved to be somewhat slippery, and Marx was forced to proceed by the use of various kinds of analogies, but McNeill argues that Marx chose the wrong kinds of analogies to illustrate his argument. The choice by Marx of structural or material analogies in his various writings are not successful and it would have been better to use the analogy of language itself, something that Marx perhaps toyed with in sections of Grundrisse, but did not follow up.

In following this line of argument, McNeill is taking us away from what he regards as a very limited concentration on what he calls the ‘structural’ or ‘quantitative’ Marx, towards a deeper understanding of social phenomena through the work of structuralists such as Althusser, Godelier, Levi-Strauss and de Saussure. McNeill is hardly the first writer to suggest a move in this direction, but the development of his argument here is rather persuasive. Economic life is certainly about much more than material things and is necessarily involved with understanding social phenomena. As the author points out, words are a wholly social construct – they both exist by virtue of meaning and allow meaning to be expressed. The commodity can usefully be seen as a sign, and commodities and money exist by virtue of value, but they also allow value to be expressed.

The next stage in the development of McNeill’s complex argument is a critique of Marx’s emphasis on production, to the neglect of exchange and consumption. Marx was surely right to give much attention to production, for it is here that exploitation of workers by the capitalist class clearly consists in the extraction of surplus value, but his emphasis on labour was hardly original. His real contribution rests with an understanding of the social, allowing him to critique conventional economic categories, but in the process, other types of social relations – in exchange and consumption – were neglected. At the time Marx was writing, McNeill suggests, this emphasis on production was fully justified, but in modern Western societies, consumption must also be treated as a social relation. Hence, the case for the primacy of production appears to be rather weak.

These arguments, presented and elaborated in the first 13 chapters, are certainly informative, and for both the student and the scholar the stages in the development of Marx’s thoughts on fetishism and value are of considerable interest, while at the same time highlighting the complexity of these concepts. But the real test of the author’s approach rests with the final two chapters and short conclusion, added much more recently and dealing with two of the most important and challenging topics of our age, the environment and the growth of financialisaton, and more particularly, the contribution that Marxist thought can make to an understanding of these most pressing problems of the twenty-first century, the environment and the financialisation of not just the economy but indeed of everyday life.

The chapter on the importance of fetishism and value theory to an understanding of the profound policy choices we now face on the environment takes issue with the commonly stated view that Marx seriously underestimated the importance of nature. As McNeill points out, Marx was not concerned with what people value or should value but with the dynamics of the capitalist system. Much of the analysis here is with Marx’s concept of rent and how it is applicable in the current age in exploring large-scale land grabs in Africa and elsewhere, and the more general question of how surplus is extracted and captured in the exploitation of land and the environment. McNeill’s conclusion is that what we are witnessing here is merely one further example of financialisation, what might be called ‘nature as accumulation strategy’ (260) and this leads neatly into a long final chapter on financialisation itself. Here the author poses several important questions: how can we define this phenomenon; does it represent an important new phase in the development of capitalism; how productive is the new finance industry; how is surplus generated and captured in this sector, and by whom; and of course, how can Marx’s concepts of fetishism and value assist us in understanding the dynamics and significance of financialisation? The answers given to these questions are broadly correct but can only be regarded as interim statements in an area where more research is badly needed: indeed, McNeill generally provides far more questions than answers, but these questions are penetrating and important enough, an indispensable stage in the process of understanding.

In the burgeoning literature on financialisation, there is now broad agreement that the finance industry has moved into virtually all corners of modern life – what is generally referred to as the ‘financialisation of everyday life’ – and this raises some very important issues. The author usefully explores the nature of risk in the modern economy, arguing persuasively that there has been a sustained shifting of risk to the individual and away from corporations. He also concludes that surplus extraction in this area is now a vital part of modern capitalism and involves the exploitation of households during processes of consumption rather than production. What are the implications of these conclusions given Marx’s emphasis on production? The author hints that we might need to undertake some important rethinking here, but does not come to any firm conclusions as to how this should proceed, which is a pity given the work of some other scholars, in particular David Harvey. McNeill cites some of Harvey’s many publications, especially in the chapter on Marx and the environment, but he neglects Harvey’s paper on Marx’s methodology (Harvey 2012). Harvey there concluded that Marx’s analysis of production identifies the real and universal dynamics of capitalism, but no such general conclusions can be derived in the area of consumption, hence it falls to later writers to explore the particular and contingent nature of consumption in different and unique contexts. Clearly, a great deal more work is needed in this critical area of analysis and while McNeill leaves many questions unanswered, he should be credited with asking many of the right questions and pointing us towards some fruitful areas for future research.

22 January 2022