Reification: or The Anxiety of Late Capitalism

Of all the concepts which have emerged to describe the effects of capitalism on the human world, none is more graphic or easily grasped than “reification”—the process by which men and women are turned into objects, things. Arising out of Marx’s account of commodity fetishism, the concept of reification offers an unrivalled tool with which to explain the real consequences of the power of capital on consciousness itself.

Symptoms of reification are proliferating around us—from the branding of ...