Commodity Hallucination
The delusional power of our possessions is compounded by the fact that most of them are commodities. The commodity, as Marx pointed out, is hallucinatory. It is a fantasy of exchange value that gets integrated into social systems; the world that is built on a hierarchy of exchange value where everything is given a price tag is a phantasmagoric world (the one we live in). The absurdity of exchange value becomes obvious if we attempt to assign this value to things such as the moon, a river, a forest, the air we breath, or a house cat. How much money is your cat worth? Any cat owner understands this question to be absurd; a beloved cat, like the moon, is invaluable; they cannot be exchanged. Even more absurd and cruel is that this law of value must necessarily turn a human into a commodity. How much are you worth? $16.50 an hour. Welcome to hell.
