The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

12 Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America
level of thought and culture that is most taken for granted, although
it tenaciously permeates and guides interpretation, including the interpretation
of Marxism itself.
Marxism, as it has come to be generally understood in the West,
has itself been deeply influenced by that stream of modern thought
that is loosely referred to as positivism, and even more loosely but
more vividly as vulgar materialism. The mechanistic concepts of
ontology and epistemology through which reality is understood as
material atoms that interact in accordance with mathematical laws
have progressively undermined the critical impetus of Marxism,
which was originally based on a synthetic and dialectical understanding
of reality in accordance with the Hegelian tradition, albeit
sharply qualified by the idea that the content of logic is historical. If
we are ever to plumb the full significance of the hostility and the
perception of unnaturalness that capitalism can engender among its
new work force, we must return to this tradition of the dialectical
and historical method, which underscores the role of consciousness
in social development, in order to empower the social development
of critical consciousness.
If there is an overall aim today that is both intellectually and morally
commendable in the mission that is anthropology—the "study
of man"—it is not only that the study of other societies reveals the
way in which they are influenced by ours but also that such investigations
provide us with some critical leverage with which to assess
and understand the sacrosanct and unconscious assumptions that
are built into and emerge from our social forms. It is with this
clearly in mind that the following pages have been written concerning
the view of nature and man revealed to us by these rural people
in South America who are now undergoing the travail of proletarianization.