Fetichism of weapons and fetichism of commodities: reflections on class struggle, politics and war

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the relationship between war and politics. The starting point are some indications made by Juan Carlos Marín about the  necessity to produce a criticism on fetichism of weapons that runs in parallel with the criticism made by Marx on the fetichism of commodities. To think this paralelism we use the concepts of nation-state and that of citizen as the keys on the construction of the armed forces of bourgeoisie. The process of construction of citizenship as one of disciplining bodies is thought to be fundamental in capitalism and it is explored in the ideas on class struggle in two authors. On the one hand, Louis Althusser states that in class struggle what we find is not only two classes, but also two forms of struggle. On the other hand, this thesis is developed and explored in the analisis that Dardo Scavino makes of the device “Civilization and Barbarism” putted forward by Sarmiento as a model of the constitution of bourgeoisie’s class struggle and constitution of citizenship in Argentina. In the conclusions we explore the notion of "citizen" and it's limits in the frame of neoliberal politics imposed by military dictatorships in latin-america and the hegemony of financial capital in ultra-imperialism.