Fetishism is the imbuing of something inanimate with living characteristics.
See [[commodity fetishism]] in [[Capital Vol. 1]], where the concept is introduced.
[[Alexander Bogdanov]] in [[The Philosophy of Living Experience]] describes a more general form of fetishism:
The nature of fetishism is clear, and it is fetishism all the same, whether abstract or absolute. An idea which is objectively the result of past social activity and a tool for further activity is conceived of as something independent of and aloof from that activity, and this blocks the path to actual cognition of it. The correlation of an idea with the practice that it organizes turns out to be inaccessible to people’s thinking.
— Alexander Bogdanov, The Philosophy of Living Experience
This is what he called [[abstract fetishism]].
[[Michael Heinrich]] said that fetishism indicates that there is more to the world than what is directly observable, and that fetishism is something we must account for. Its existence can be seen as a criticism of [[empiricism]].