Commodity, Social Mediation and Identity Thinking: Environmentalism versus the Fetishization of Capital

Abstract

Through the concept of social mediation in Karl Marx, we will try to show how capitalist commodity society establishes a totality whose link between subjects is produced through the value form and its categories —abstract labor, capital, money—. However, this form of social mediation remains hidden from its subjects, originating forms of subjectivity that Theodor Adorno understood asidentity thinking. Through both authors we intend to illustrate the difficulty of social movements in the mobilization of their political praxis, to find new ways and imaginaries capable of mediating in a radical transformation of society. We address the specific case of ecologism, which is currently trapped in this identity logic, losing its critical potential and its capacity to confront the ecological crisis of our century.