On Marx's concept of commodity fetishism

Marx’s account of “commodity fetishism” discloses how--in our social exchanges--the commodity assumes the status of a magical object that seems to have uncanny powers. If the labour of an individual produces an item to be exchanged, nonetheless, in the process of social interactions and exchanges, this product takes on an abstract value that is divorced both from the amount of labour involved in its production and the usefulness of the product. For example, a diamond - even if it is found accidentally - might be exchanged for a cottage that is both more useful and required much labour to produce. This abstract exchange value transforms the products of labour into commodities, and the “fetish” is the process of abstraction itself, through which the diamond as commodity appears to us as quite naturally more valuable than a small cottage. This illusory appearance of ‘naturalness’ in the exchange values between things masks the social relations and activities that constitute exchange value. The key point is that social relations are obscured behind a fetish, a fantastic unreflective view of material things as having the power to determine values themselves in the marketplace.