“The existence of the things qua commodities, and the value-relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising there from. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. This I call the Fetishism ... of commodities,” wrote Karl Marx. This week we explore the consequence of a world in which things have a life of their own.