Reification

Reification
(Marxism)
In Marxism, reification (German:

Verdinglichung, literally: 'making into a
thing') is the process by which social
relations are perceived as inherent
attributes of the people involved in them,
or attributes of some product of the
relation, such as a traded commodity.
This implies that objects are transformed

into subjects and subjects are turned into
objects, with the result that subjects are
rendered passive or determined, while
objects are rendered as the active,
determining factor. Hypostatization refers
to an effect of reification which results
from supposing that whatever can be
named, or conceived abstractly, must
actually exist, an ontological and
epistemological fallacy.
The concept is related to, but distinct from,
Marx's theories of alienation and
commodity fetishism.[1] Alienation is the
general condition of human estrangement;
reification is a specific form of alienation;
commodity fetishism is a specific form of
reification.
Development and
significance of the concept
Reification was not a particular prominent
term or concept in Marx's own works, nor
in that of his immediate successors. The
concept of reification rose to prominence
chiefly through the work of Georg Lukács,
in his essay "Reification and the
Consciousness of the Proletariat", part of
his book History and Class Consciousness;
this is the locus classicus for defining the
term in its current sense. Here, Lukács
treats it as a problem of capitalist society
related to the prevalence of the
commodity form, through a close reading
of Marx's chapter on commodity fetishism
in Capital. Lukács's account was influential
for the philosophers of the Frankfurt
School, for example in Horkheimer's and
Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, and in
the works of Herbert Marcuse. Others who
have written about this point include Max
Stirner, Guy Debord, Gajo Petrović, Raya
Dunayevskaya, Raymond Williams,
Timothy Bewes, Axel Honneth, and Slavoj
Žižek.
Petrović, in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought,

defines reification as:[1]
The act (or result of the act) of

transforming human properties,
relations and actions into
properties, relations and actions
of man‑produced things which
have become independent (and
which are imagined as
originally independent) of man
and govern his life. Also
transformation of human beings
into thing‑like beings which do
not behave in a human way but
according to the laws of the
thing‑world. Reification is a
‘special’ case of alienation, its
most radical and widespread
form characteristic of modern
capitalist society.
Reification occurs when specifically

human creations are misconceived as
"facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or
manifestations of divine will".[2][3]
However, some recent scholarship on

Lukács's own use of the term "reification"
in History and Class Consciousness has
challenged this interpretation of the
concept, according to which reification
implies that a pre-existing subject creates
an objective social world which is then
alienated from it. Andrew Feenberg
reinterprets Lukács's central category of
"consciousness" as similar to
anthropological notions of culture as a set
of practices.[4][5] The reification of
consciousness in particular, therefore, is
more than just an act of misrecognition; it
affects the everyday social practice at a
fundamental level beyond the individual
subject. Other scholarship has suggescted
that Lukács's use of the term may have
been strongly influenced by Edmund
Husserl's phenomenology to understand
his preoccupation with the reification of
consciousness in particular.[6] On this
reading, reification entails a stance that
separates the subject from the objective
world, creating a mistaken relation
between subject and object that is
reduced to disengaged knowing. Applied
to the social world, this leaves individuals
subjects feeling that society is something
they can only know as an alien power,
rather than interact with. In this respect,
Lukács's use of the term could be seen as
prefiguring some of the themes Martin
Heidegger touches on in Being and Time,
supporting Lucien Goldman's suggestion
that Lukács and Heidegger were much
closer in their philosophical concerns than
typically thought.[7]
Criticism
French philosopher Louis Althusser
criticized what he called the "ideology of
reification" that sees "'things' everywhere in
human relations".[8] Althusser's critique
derives from his theory of the
"epistemological break", which finds that
Marx underwent significant theoretical and
methodological change between his early
and his mature work.
Though the concept of reification is used

in Das Kapital by Marx, Althusser finds in it
an important influence from the similar
concept of alienation developed in the
early The German Ideology and in the
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of
1844.
Frankfurt School philosopher Axel

Honneth reformulates this key "Western
Marxist" concept in terms of
intersubjective relations of recognition and
power in his recent work Reification
(Oxford, 2008). Instead of being an effect
of the structural character of social
systems such as capitalism, as Karl Marx
and György Lukács argued, Honneth
contends that all forms of reification are
due to pathologies of intersubjectively
based struggles for recognition.
See also
The Secret of Hegel
Character mask
Objectification
References
1. Gajo Petrović, A Dictionary of Marxist
Thought, edited by Tom Bottomore,
Laurence Harris, V.G. Kiernan, Ralph
Miliband (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1983), pp.
411–413 [1]
2. Berger, Peter, & Luckmann, Thomas.
(1966). The social construction of
reality: A treatise in the sociology of
knowledge. New York:
Anchor/Doubleday.
3. Silva, Sónia (2013). "Reification and
Fetishism: Processes of
Transformation". Theory, Culture &
Society. 30 (1): 79–98.
doi:10.1177/0263276412452892 .
4. Feenberg, A Lukács, Marx and the
Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman
and Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University
Press, 1986)
5. Feenberg, A, The Philosophy of Praxis:
Marx, Lukács and the Frankfurt
School(Verso Press, 2014)
6. Westerman, R, ‘The Reification of
Consciousness: Husserl’s
Phenomenology in Lukács’s Subject-
Object’: New German Critique 111 (Fall
2010)
7. Goldman, L. Lukács and Heidegger:
Towards a New Philosophy. Trans.
William Q. Boelhower. London:
Routledge, 2009.
8. Althusser, Louis; "Marxism and
Humanism" in For Marx, p. 230,
endnote 7 [2]
Further reading
Althusser, Louis: "Humanism and
Marxism" in For Marx, The Penguin
Press, 1969.
Arato, Andrew: Lukács’s Theory of
Reification, Telos, 1972.
Bewes, Timothy 2002: Reification, or
The Anxiety of Late Capitalism , Verso,
2002, ISBN 1-85984-685-8.
Burris, Val: "Reification: A marxist
perspective" , California Sociologist, Vol.
10, No. 1, 1988, pp. 22–43.
Dabrowski, Tomash: "Reification" ,
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political
Thought, Blackwell, 2014, DOI:
10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0875
Dahms, Harry: "Beyond the Carousel of
Reification: Critical Social Theory after
Lukács, Adorno, and Habermas." Current
Perspectives in Social Theory 18 (1998):
3-62. (See Harry Dahms)
Duarte, German A: Reificación Mediática
(Sic Editorial 2011)
Dunayevskaya, Raya: "Reification of
People and the Fetishism of
Commodities" , in The Raya
Dunayevskaya Collection, pp. 167–191.
Feenberg, Andrew: Lukács, Marx and the
Sources of Critical Theory (Rowman and
Littlefield, 1981; Oxford University Press,
1986)
Feenberg, Andrew: The Philosophy of
Praxis: Marx, Lukács and the Frankfurt
School(Verso Press, 2014)
Floyd, Kevin: "Introduction: On Capital,
Sexuality, and the Situations of
Knowledge," in The Reification of Desire:
Toward a Queer Marxism. Minneapolis,
MN.: University of Minnesota Press,
2009.
Gabel, Joseph : False consciousness : an
essay on reification. New York: Harper &
Row, 1975.
Goldmann, Lucien 1959: "Réification", in
Recherches dialectiques, Gallimard,
1959, Paris.
Goldman, Lucien: Lukács and Heidegger:
Towards a New Philosophy. Trans.
William Q. Boelhower. London:
Routledge, 2009
Honneth, Axel: "Reification: A
Recognition-Theoretical View" , The
Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
delivered at University of California-
Berkeley, March 14–16, 2005.
Honneth, Axel. Reification: A New Look.
Oxford University Press, 2008. Honneth
on reification with responses by Judith
Butler, Raymond Geuss, and Jonathan
Lear.
Kangrga, Milan 1968: ‘Was ist
Verdinglichung?’
Larsen, Neil: "Lukács sans Proletariat, or
Can History and Class Consciousness be
Rehistoricized?". Timothy Bewes and
Timothy Hall, eds., Georg Lukács: The
Fundamental Dissonance of Existence,
Continuum, 2011: 81-100.
Löwith, Karl 1932 (1982): Max Weber
and Karl Marx.
Lukács, Georg 1923: "Reification and the
Consciousness of the Proletariat" in
History & Class Consciousness, Merlin
Press, 1967.
Petrović, Gajo: "Reification" in A
Dictionary of Marxist Thought, edited by
Tom Bottomore, Laurence Harris, V.G.
Kiernan, Ralph Miliband (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1983), pp. 411–413.
Rubin, I. I. 1928 (1972): Essays on
Marx’s Theory of Value.
Schaff, Adam 1980: Alienation as a
Social Phenomenon.
Tadić, Ljubomir 1969: ‘Bureaucracy—
Reified Organization’. In M. Marković
and G. Petrović eds. Praxis.
Vandenberghe, Frederic: A Philosophical
History of German Sociology. London:
Routledge, 2009.
Westerman, Richard: "The Reification of
Consciousness: Husserl’s
Phenomenology in Lukács’s Subject-
Object" : New German Critique 111 (Fall
2010)
Westerman, Richard: Lukács'
Phenomenology of Capitalism:
Reification Revalued, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018, New York.
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Reification_(Marxism)&oldid=927431821"
Last edited 12 days ago by SMcCandlish
Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

otherwise noted.

Reification

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reification

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reification

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Reiﬁcation

In Marxism, reiﬁcation (German:

This implies that objects are transformed

Petrović, in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought,

The act (or result of the act) of

Reiﬁcation occurs when speciﬁcally

However, some recent scholarship on

Though the concept of reiﬁcation is used

Frankfurt School philosopher Axel

Last edited 12 days ago by SMcCandlish

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

You might also like