American Gov. Kapital When one gets down to the roots of capitalism you find
that it is a form of government that allows the rich to get richer, the poor,
poorer and the middle class to stay the same. Karl Marx wrote a book, Kapital
about the what capitalism does to the people in a society, how it takes the
humainty out of being and replaces it with x. Not only does it do that but it
creates a chain of commodities, fetishisis, and alienation within a society.
Commodities are at the top of this chain. A commodity is anything that is
produced for exchange. They have two parts to them, the use of the commodity and
its value. With women, and men the use of the human body is humanity, doing
whatever it is that pleases you, whether it be riding your bike, reading,
dancing, whatever, it comes down to your humanity.
Their humanity is turned into a value when women have to sell their use to
obtain different forms of commodities, to then exchange those commodities for
more commodities. In capitalism women are defined by their bodies, and judged by
what their bodies can do, and look like. Women have to sell their humanity
because in capitalism that’s the only thing people have to sell.
In capitalism it doesn’t matter who or what you are, as long as you’re
producing something that will make money. Women sell their humanity in different
ways, there seems to be a same scale in place with women’s jobs, modeling (which
is at the far right), stripping (somewhere in between), and prostitution (which
is at the far left).
Most wouldn’t connect these three with having any basic ground (maybe
stripping & prostitution), but their basic ground is that women are all selling
there use for some form of a commodity, which most of the time is money. The
outcome that that has is profound. Not only does it effect women, and girls, it
effects boys and men. Their images of women become so distorted that they begin
to believe them. Women become fetishes for both men and women. With any
commodity it will become a fetish.
