Fetish and the Motley

For this month’s blog, I’ve decided to consider the concepts of Marx in relation to our 5-C’s. More specifically, I’ll look at Marx in the context of my work-study wage labor as a Motley barista. Poor Karl will probably be turning over in his grave, if he isn’t already.

Within Capital, Marx details his theory of the fetishism of commodities. He introduces this topic concisely, with the understanding that, “[t]he equality of all sorts of human labor is expressed objectively by their products all being equally values; the measure of the expenditure of labor-power by the duration of that expenditure, takes the form of the quantity of value of the products of labor; and finally the mutual relations of the producers, within which the social character of their labor affirms itself, take the form of a social relation between the products” (667). It is the resultant inversion of objective and social that creates, for Marx, the fetish. The value which comes from the social form of labor appears objective; the relation between the commodities as products of labor appears social and obscures the social relations that actually exist between the producers. As Marx claims, this fetishism exists everywhere in a capitalistic society, but is recognized nowhere.

The examination doesn’t need to reach any depth, though, before it becomes clear that practically the only similarity between barista-ing at the Motley and the wage labor discussed by Marx is the wage itself. Firstly, I wouldn’t like to meet the person who’d claim anyone working at the Motley or enrolled at any of the 5-C’s is a member of the proletariat. I’m not selling my “life-activity” to earn the means of my immediate subsistence. I use my paycheck to pay for overpriced textbooks and frozen yogurt.

Secondly, working as a barista, I provide a service instead of producing a product. Foaming the milk for your latte and pouring water for your tea doesn’t require that much hard labor (what ends up in your cup might be a bit gross if we did have to work up a sweat over it). And the labor that is expended has no receptacle to contain its value, just a compostable cup, and “the commodity” is, by definition, a repository of labor power in the form of “value.” The latte isn’t a very good commodity. It costs $2.75 or so, and, in a sense, you could exchange it for something else worth $2.75…like a greeting card…or a pack of pencils…. (Does nothing costs $2.75 anymore?) But as the latte sits for 10 minutes and it settles to room temperature and the foam deflates into crinkly little bubbles, it loses almost all of its value; the latte is not a very good commodity. So we make a point of getting it to you directly and because of this there isn’t even a chance for the labor we do expend to be clouded over: you see us make your drink and we hand it to you directly. Yet…there are times when it seems that the counter does more than divide the customers and the baristas physically.

As Marx phrases it, “there it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things” (667). You hand me your student I.D. card over the counter and I hand you your iced coffee. There is a definite social relation between the barista (me) and the customer (you) but it assumes the form of a social relation between my iced coffee and your flex. It seems that if the Motley patron doesn’t recognize their barista from class or other activities they don’t recognize their barista as an individual. Last semester Iced Coffee Boy came in on almost every one of my Wednesday afternoon shifts and ordered, naturally, Iced Coffee—but “only if it’s cold.” My co-workers and I, not being particularly stupid, began to anticipate his order. Revealing this anticipation was, however, a mistake. Despite his coming in at the same time every week and ordering the same drink with every visit, he was visibly unsettled; maybe he felt the experience was uncanny. He isn’t the only customer to do this. There’s also Irish Cream Latte Guy and the Girl-who-wants-only-steamed-soy-milk. Most customers have drinks they usually order.

Based on the number of ways this interaction doesn’t line up directly with Marx’s conceptualization of commodity fetishism, maybe most people wouldn’t consider this to be an instance of it; but I think that would be an attempt to ignore and even explain away the pervasiveness of the fetishism. Honestly, the majority of Motley patrons do have a more direct relationship with the Motley than that and they do recognize and interact with their baristas. Iced Coffee Boy represents the extreme; but during a rush, or hurrying to get to class, all customers act in that way to varying degrees, quickly extending their I.D. in order to quickly receive their drink. Students of the Claremont Colleges don’t even seem to recognize their flex as “real” money; or maybe they just don’t want to. Another barista, Annie, routinely tells every customer the price of their purchase and they routinely look at her like she’s crazy. This, I guess, is just another way for a barista to unpleasantly break the relationship (or lack there of) which we unspokenly enter into.

I don’t find the limited degree to which Marx explicitly applies to life in Claremont to discount this theory. On the contrary, the fact that it applies to even this degree in our bourgeois enclave suggests to me the truth of his claims. Consider an environment that, unlike the Motley, strives for streamlined hyper-rationality (Wal-Mart?). The employees might wear nametags, but how often are they used. The employees are even replaced with self-checkout stations. The interactions take on increasingly impersonal and increasingly inhuman qualities. Take the consideration a step further, to the level Marx seems to be theorizing on, where the interactions are those of masses of products only, masses of linen, brick, gold, toilet paper and human labor disappears entirely, just as he theorizes. The gold and toilet paper relate to each other based on their “intrinsic” value which appears, finally, independent of the labor that their producers sold to obtain their immediate subsistence.