Explanation of how the money fetish is at the centre of the notion of an 'American Dream':

The ruling ideology of the American Dream promises everybody in the capitalist society of the USA the possibility to achieve wholeness to get rid of their being subjects-with-holes, which means the possibility for everybody to achieve “economic success,”

if subjects just work hard enough. Insofar as the Dream tells subjects that they can make it from the dishwasher to the millionaire, we find the money fetish as the unconscious fantasy object a at the core of the Dream.

The money fetish assists, like a mirage, to erase the appearance of structural barriers of gender, racial and class injustices, and provides subjects with the illusion that they can become whole.

Furthermore, the ruling ideology of the Dream, which we find in different variations in the US American left to the far right, suggests that it is capitalism that allows subjects to reach the American Dream.

As such the Dream, via the money fetish at its centre, covers over the fact that capitalism, instead of securing wholeness for subjects, further depletes them of the mental and physical energies, which is why Marx signified capital throughout Das Kapital I as a “vampire”

that circumvents any existing moral and physical barriers to fully suck out the last drops of the worker’s blood to enliven itself, which leads to chronic illness and workers’ premature deaths."