Commodity Fetishism and Human relations

Recently I was asked a question by a friend of mine about the rules that governed the phenomenon of attraction, this question was the follow up of a discussion on commodity fetishism, a concept discussed by Marx in Capital vol.1 where he theorises that in a capitalist society commodities playing such a pivotal role that they start encroaching upon every facet of the society. Niche spaces of human character like the relations people build with others and the emotions which lie behind them start showing signs of consumerism in them. Bonds of friendship, love, loyalty and trust start having commodities as their foundations instead plain emotions. This phenomenon occurs to such extent that after a point it will seem as though the commodities have started forging relations among them with the human facet as a background. It was in light of this theory that my friend had asked me the question, she was curious to know if there was actually an element of truth to this theory, that the relations that we build an the emotions that we express are actually only to mask the real relations that we had forged with the commodities that the other person possessed. The theory makes a lot of sense to me, but to claim a complete absence of emotions is false. Our society in my view is divided into innumerable fragments based on standard of living. Although in broader perspective class serves as an indicator of economic status, but the fragments I am talking of are intra class. There is constant overlapping of these fragments as they are very similar and belong to the same class but there are slight variations among them based on asset ownership and the quality of those assets.

It is almost always that various relationships are forged within these overlapping social spheres. And especially when we talk of attraction and getting romantically involved    with someone the social fragment which the two individuals belong to plays a prominent   role. This process takes place subconsciously and it is only after this process that individuals experience feelings like attraction, 'love', etc. I can cite numerous examples of this process, people of similar economic status go to similar social recreational spaces, educational spaces. Although we can find counter examples, but I doubt that there will be a lot. So again i find it impossible not to refer to our films, but this time I would disagree with them as the case in which the rich girl falls for the poor guy almost never happens in the real world.