We cannot leave our discussion of the first nine chapters of Capital, Vol. I without looking at what is perhaps the most difficult to understand and really enigmatic section of any chapter in the whole of Capital; even more difficult than the first few chapters of Capital on the subject of value. I am referring to section 4 of Chapter 1, Vol. I, entitled ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof ‘ (1974a, 76–87 [1976, 163–77]). Following Georg Lukács deservedly famous essay entitled ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’ (History and Class Consciousness, 1971, 83–222), most discussion of commodity fetishism has been in terms of Lukács’ concept of reification, and has focused on the question of ‘false’ consciousness (i.e. the alleged failure of the working class to develop a revolutionary class consciousness) and/or the question of realism: the level of reality that is said to underlie the appearance of things. In what follows I will adopt a very different approach to this question partly because I will be concerned to present a close textual analysis of Marx's discussion of commodity fetishism in Capital, Vol. I (especially the first four pages, 1974a, 76–9 [1976, 163–8]), but mainly because I will argue that Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism has nothing at all to do with the question of the false consciousness of the working class or with Lukács’ concept of reification.