Reification (Marxism)

Reification referred to each other, the reversal of the ratio of labor for one another producing people in a versachlichtes ( reified ) ratio of goods in Marxist theory. Under capitalist relations of production, the products of labor take the form of goods, money and capital and become independent as such against their actual producers. This process is also referred to as alienation of the producer of the product and the producers themselves.

The term goes back to Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach. According to them, it is the process of alienation of a subject that objectifies his ideas in his produced ideas and things. For Feuerbach the idea of ​​God as a reification of the human being.

The reification of the Marxist approach by social relations in the form of things will appear, which have their own laws, which is no longer Artwork by man. According to Marx, reification takes place in the " commodity fetishism " their prototypical expression.

Theorists of reification include

• Karl Marx ( Capital, Volume 1 )
• Georg Lukács ( History and Class Consciousness )
• Theodor W. Adorno
• Axel Honneth ( Verdinglichung. A recognition-theoretical study)

Even the critique of value to Robert Kurz than younger category of Marxist theory (post- Marxism ), the reification and alienation at the heart of their investigations.