Product Value to Personal Value

"If commodities could speak, they would say this: our use-value may interest men, but it does not belong to us as objects. What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value" (243).

Marx emphasizes here that it's not really the product we are interested in that makes up buy more and pay more, it's the relationship we imagine with that product. It's the way we think that product will affect the value we place on ourselves. This behavior is reflective of our "fetish" with the Monetary System. We, as humans, as a society, are obsessed with branding and personal value. We seem to try to express our own self worth through the products we buy. For example, if I choose to buy a $100 pair of jeans I may deem myself more valuable as a person than if I bought a $30 pair. The fact that I was able to spend this amount on a pair of jeans tells others that I am worth more than they are. Such a simple conscious purchase with such a powerful subconscious societal message attached. Also, consider the product's use-value. Working with my example again, the expensive pair of jeans may not prove to be any more useful or of any higher quality than the cheaper pair, but it's all about the brand, the money, and how that money and that brand portray me as a person to the rest of the members of society.

I find this phenomenon super interesting and I love to analyze how people buy things and why they buy them due to marketing, fashion trends and role models. There was actually a book I read recently called Why We Buy which explained our buying habits according to certain store displays and how the stores choose subconsciously our next purchases depending on floor plans, sales, and customer service. But for the record, my favorite pair of jeans cost me $15 at a consignment store and are worn at least five times as much as my $70 pair, so it's all relative.