Comparing Karl Marx And Nike Sweatshops In Asian Countries

Have you ever bought something and wondered about the conditions of its productions? Things like where it was produced, who was it produced by, how many were made? It is very likely that you have had that thought at least once. Chances are, however, that you didn’t do anything about that fleeting thought once you left the store. You consumed your item and forgot about the questioning of production. It seems like every few years another picture emerges of Nike sweatshops in Asian countries that send people into an uproar but cause people to conveniently forget that almost every major company that outsources labor to international countries have these factories because it is cheaper than producing domestically. Karl Marx, and his theory on the fetishism of commodities explains how commodities are fetishized in two different

It is certainly seen in just basic retail shopping, whether it be for a clothes, entertainment, or even food. One of the easiest ways to see the fetishism is through the amount of money people spend on brand name items compared to their plain counterpart. Designer brands aren’t worth more because they are made with better materials, in more developed countries, from less poor people. They are worth more because they are given a higher social status, whether from celebrity endorsement or pride of the finished product. Andrew Robinson said it best in his article on Marx’s fetishisms, “This puts fetishism on a different level: the system ceases to attach additional elements to objects with independent uses, but rather, feeds back the fetish into the uses of the objects themselves. (In Theory)” Designer brands are also given a better status because of their cost alone, which is very circular. A product is expensive because of how we view said product, but we view said product based on the expensive