No worries, happy to help :) Yes it’s a common misconception like I said. Hopefully if you reread the commodity fetishism section of Capital with that in mind (it’s just one subheading under the first chapter, though of course it’s relevant to the whole book) you’ll see some of the points I took from that section in what Marx says.
My understanding is that Marx’s analysis is that when individual commodities are fetishized he meant that people believe that commodities as commodities are capable of meeting the believer’s personal human needs, when in reality it is actually the human relationships that are meeting the needs through the application of labor on nature to produce that which is needed.
This is a common misunderstanding, but not correct. The commodity fetish is not something that occurs in people’s minds. We could all be consciously aware of the commodity fetish but it would still happen; it doesn’t describe a false belief, but it describes the actual appearance of commodities under capitalism. It falls into the category of a “real abstraction”, that is, an abstraction that actually happens in real life, rather than one that is psychological. Another example of a real abstraction is abstract and concrete labour. Concrete labour is the actual labour performed, such as sewing, farming, driving, etc. Concrete labour must become abstract labour in order to exchange commodities; if I exchange cookies I baked for a T-shirt you tailored, we somehow have to make baking and tailoring commensurable, even though they are qualitatively different labour. How many cookies is a T-shirt worth? That would seem a nonsensical question at first glance, because those are two completely different things. But the value-form provides a universal quantifier of commodities, that is, socially necessary labour time, which must be a measure of abstract labour, because e.g. 1 hour of highly skilled labour is worth more than 1 hour of unskilled labour (here, “skilled” is not meant disparagingly towards unskilled labour; skilled labour is more labour because it requires education, e.g. a doctor’s labour is not just 1 hour of doctoring but also 10 years of medical school split up across the doctor’s whole career). Making concrete labour into abstract labour is a real abstraction, i.e. it really happens every time you exchange commodities. You can be aware of it, you can be critical of it, you can hate that it happens, but it will still happen; it is part of the exchange process. Similarly, the commodity fetish is part of the commodity form. If it were psychological, it would be divorcable from the commodity form; the exchangers of commodities could simply decide in their heads to “combat” the commodity fetish and not be beholden to it.
Marx clarifies in the section of Capital I’m talking about (the subsection of chapter 1) that the causation is not “people see objects as homogeneous labour → they exchange them”, but the other way round: “people exchange products of labour → they equate different kinds of labour as human labour”.
Like, what even is an example of a “mystical property” that would apply in the context of industrial modernity?
Taking directly from chapter 1 of Capital again, the commodity reflects the social characteristics of people’s labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves. This is a peculiar trait of commodities—in pre-capitalist societies, relations between people appeared as relations between people, but in capitalist societies, relations between people appear as relations between things. Examples Marx gives of this:
Isn’t this mystical thinking?
Again, we’re not talking about any kind of thinking. The commodity fetish occurs without awareness, i.e. it is not a process that occurs in the mind.
“Money means you can get more stuff” is ascribing a power to commodity (in this case money) that is actually a power inherent in the relationship between humans.
I mean, no, “money means you can get more stuff” is true in the context of capitalist society. I have a job not because I love doing shitty manual labour for the capitalists I work for, but because I need a roof over my head and I need to eat. I’m alienated from the means of subsistence as a proletarian so I need to sell my labour-power to obtain means of subsistence. This is objectively correct; that’s how capitalism works. Being anti-capitalist or a Marx scholar or attaining any kind of consciousness is not going to change these facts.
And content is not a commodity (or it is only in the colloquial sense, not in the Marxist or economic sense). Commodities have an exchange-value. Generally, online content is not exchanged, but distributed for free (since it can be copied nearly-infinitely nearly-freely; e.g. you reading my comment doesn’t prevent anyone else from reading it).
Genuine question, have you read any of Capital? Not trying to be an ass, but Marx explains in the first chapter, and the book I linked is a good supplementary text too. You don’t have to read all of Capital; like I said, the commodity fetish gets explained in the first chapter. (Though I highly recommend taking the time to read all of Capital; it’s a great text and provides the basis of a scientific critique of capitalism and class society.)
“Fetish”, in “commodity fetish” refers to the commodity appearing to have mystical properties, when in actuality it’s an inanimate object. But it appears animate; it appears to be capable of magical things; and it also makes social relations between people appear as relations between things, e.g. the relation of domination between capitalist and worker appears as an exchange of commodities, a wage in exchange for labour-power. The wording of “fetish” comes from an old racist conception where Europeans said that Africans had a “fetish” of particular religious objects, i.e. they ascribed magical properties to these objects that they didn’t have. Whilst that old conception is racist and wrong, I think the concept of the commodity fetish still holds true.
The commodity fetish isn’t particularly related to what OP is talking about. Clout-chasing is just clout-chasing. The desire to make money is because, well, we live in a capitalist society, and more money means you can get more stuff. The commodity fetish describes properties of commodities, not behaviour of people. It describes the way commodities actually appear; there’s no mental process or actions you can take to undo the commodity fetish, because it is a description of the actual way commodities function under capitalism.
The commodity fetish isn’t about “everyone trying to make money all the time”… The commodity fetish explains the obfuscation of social relations. Not people trying to make money. People try to make money because it can be exchanged for goods and services, believe it or not.
And what observable effect does that have on the world that isn’t exactly what OP is describing?
One could say:
The commodity fetish is central to Marx’s project. This book is a good argument on the significance of the commodity fetish for Marx.
I don’t understand this ridiculous anti-intellectualism. Why reference Marx if you seem to refuse to actually learn what he said?
I’m baffled by how many people are saying they experience this. This has never been a problem for me. I thought conventional wisdom was that food tastes better when it’s your own cooking, and I’ve definitely found that to be true for me personally. Not that I’m an amazing cook but I think the cooking process helps me appreciate what has gone into the food and makes it appear better.
No, that is not what the commodity fetish is. This is literally first chapter of Capital. The commodity fetish refers to the appearance of relations between people as relations between things, and the way that things (commodities) appear to have person-like qualities. This is not something that happens in the mind but a real abstraction that actually occurs under the capitalist mode of production.
Not what that means
I do things mostly digitally except for things like math and diagrams where it’s easier to draw it by hand.
If you’re stuck on your phone, you could use Anki for flash cards.
Why the fuck are you suicidal if you’re in the US? You’re not the ones being invaded. Talk about making things about yourself. You should be sabotaging your country’s war efforts.
I do have a profile picture, but I don’t think it’s crucial. Other link aggregators often don’t have profile pictures so if you’re used to those, you may not think to set one. In any case I’ve never thought anyone’s profile picture on here was particularly consequential to me.
I would just keep it as is. But yeah, sounds like your board wasn’t oiled properly. Rub some mineral oil into it and leave to dry.
Semi-private as well. I try to have completely separate identities on different websites that aren’t easily linked to each other, and each different identity has different “boundaries” on what I will share about myself. e.g. on some websites I share what country I live in, some I don’t. On some websites I specify my gender, on some I don’t. Tbh I don’t think I specify my age anywhere because I started using the internet as a kid and got used to never stating my age—still feels wrong today as an adult.
That all being said, I do still have varying things I’m open about in different contexts to enable me to have conversations about topics I want to have conversations about. I don’t state anything my government doesn’t know though (unless it’s completely irrelevant/useless for them to know).
In the US, they use “liberal” to mean “left-wing” (and their left wing is also most countries’ right-wing or centre).
Liberalism actually refers to, essentially, the ideology of the bourgeoisie: of individual freedoms, markets, inalienable property rights, etc. In most countries with a political party that calls itself “liberal”, these parties will be centre to right wing and generally support a “freer” market as well as some social freedoms.
I have no money atm but my last round of FOSS donations was just picking based on a function of how much I use a piece of software; how much I like it; and how much money I think it already gets. e.g. I didn’t donate to the Linux kernel because that’s already well-funded, even though I use it every day and like it well enough.
I think my last donations included River (the Wayland compositor I use). For the life of me I can’t remember what else there was but I tend to do rounds of donations when I have money to spare and just pick software based on the above criteria.
RSS/Atom feeds are exactly what you describe. And there are plenty of local-only RSS readers. I use newsboat personally. There are also GUI programs, and mobile apps, if that’s your preference.
Depends on the country. Also “can” is different to “will”. In most countries it is unlikely anything will happen if you use a good VPN.
I wash my body towels (for stepping out of the shower) weekly. I wash hand towels, for drying hands after washing hands, whenever I feel like it, quite infrequently but they get washed.
I’d only replace a towel if it fell apart or something like that. If it’s unusable.
You’ve rather boldly made that unsubstantiated claim. Who do you think these scammers are? They’re from poor countries suffering from the aftereffects of colonialism and the ongoing effects of neocolonialism, all of which cause many social problems including the kind that drive people, either through direct violent coercion or more indirect economic coercion, to do things like scam westerners.
You should consider why you are so eager to invent and use a slur that is also obviously based on a real racial slur.
People play games for different reasons. A lot of people play games to relax, and challenge themselves doing serious stuff. It’s literally fine for things like cheats to exist (and there’s no such thing as cheating for singleplayer games anyway). If someone wants to make their singleplayer game easier, or to skip a particularly hard section, or whatever, it doesn’t affect anyone else in any way, so let them.