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Why do Marxists use the terms fetish(ism), reification, alienation and what do they mean?
The process of turning goods and services into products to be sold masks the true value of humanity, explains the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY

THE answer to the first question is — because they sum up what are sometimes difficult concepts to understand or explain — which (in answer to the second question) is what we’re going to try to do now.

Let’s start with alienation. Alienation is the way that humans are distanced and estranged from what should be (and sometimes once was) theirs — their work, their skills, their time, their humanity, themselves, often through its appropriation by others.

The concept appears first in Marx’s early writings, in particular his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (which were unpublished in his lifetime).

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