The commodity is this illusion, which is in fact real, and the spectacle is its most general form. 48 Use value was formerly implicit in exchange value. The spectacle is another facet of money, which is the abstract general equivalent of all commodities. The spectacle is money for contemplation only, for here the totality of use has already been bartered for the totality of abstract representation. With the achievement of a purely economic abundance, the concentrated result of social labor becomes visible, subjecting all reality to an appearance that is in effect that labor's product.
Capital is no longer the invisible center determining the mode of production.
As it accumulates, capital spreads out to the periphery, where it assumes the form of tangible objects. Society in its length and breadth becomes capital's faithful portrait. The economy's triumph as an independent power inevitably also spells its doom, for it has unleashed forces that must eventually destroy the economic necessity that was the unchanging basis of earlier societies. Such an economy irrevocably breaks all ties with authentic needs to the precise degree that it emerges from a social unconscious that was dependent on it without knowing it. Whatever is conscious wears out.