Commodity Fetishism Issue of Sweatshops

Question :

How is commodity fetishism related to the issue of sweatshops? 

Answer :

The term was coined by Karl Marx in order to mock political economists who argued that analyzing as well as studying economic systems carefully would lead to a set of natural laws that could be compared to those found in chemistry or physics. It is a perception of a certain relationship or social relationship among things such as money and commodity. The concept of commodity fetishism perceives that the monetary value of a particular product arises from as well as resides within the product itself. It does not arise due to a series of interpersonal relationship that produces the product as well as evolves its values. Sweatshop has been defined by the government of the department of labor of the United States as a factory that violates two or more labor laws. It has the poor working condition, unreasonable hours, unfair wages, child labor, as well as lack of benefits for workers (Robbins, 2005 pp-55). The issues of sweatshops are closely related to commodity fetishism. As the commodity fetishism fails to recognize the effort of labor or appreciate the investment of labor that went into the production of the product and only intrinsic value is considered, sweatshop also fails to recognize the effort of labor and provide them unfair wages. 

Due to the lack of employment opportunities, they are forced to work in sweatshop and hence they are being exploited by the owner of sweatshops. Sweatshops are characterized by poor working conditions, child labor, unreasonable working hours, unfair wages, and a lack of benefits to workers. Mostly in developing countries, sweatshops are operating and exploiting labors as much as they can due to a lack of employment opportunities to people. Sweatshops are closely related to the culture of capitalism today as well as in the past because in the culture of capitalism as well, people were being exploited by the capitalist in the past and even today labors are being exploited by the capitalist. Capitalists have the resources and hence poor people are forced to work for them under their defined condition (Robbins, 2005 pp-54). Capitalists provide unfair wages to the labor because they think that they have all the resources and in order to earn a livelihood, labors will have to work for them in any situation.