No Herbert. Ideology by nature is a fetish. Please do your reading herbert.
Dissensus Dilettante Society
- Thread starter constant escape
- Start date
No Herbert. Ideology by nature is a fetish. Please do your reading herbert.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Yeah I've yet to grasp the theory around the fetish, fetishization. My current understanding is that it involves some encapsulation of desire, or encapsulation of that which quenches desire - not sure. Not even sure where it comes up in Marx, but I'm teetering on the edge of that ship, concerned that further reading of Marx will only tighten the reality of capitalism.
edit: material encapsulation, that is. But hey maybe it can also apply to abstract objects.
edit: material encapsulation, that is. But hey maybe it can also apply to abstract objects.
inevitable. production on a national and global level asserts itself as complete unplanned chaotic anarchy for the capitalist, whilst highly centralised and organised for the labourer. There is no ideal callibration because the social relations of class by their nature precipitate different ways of existence within a mode of production.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'm not disputing any of that, just describing how it works out in applied sense
constant escape
winter withered, warm
You mean the mechanism of that particular thing, like how its materials are sourced, how it is marketed, etc?
Not merely desire in the psychoanalytic sense but relational to seeing capitalist value as naturalised rather than a relationship between people.
Didn't think we were arguing. Though I was probably arguing with Herbert there. There can't be an ideal transition from the capitalist to the post-capitalist, because capitalism itself is not ideal. Capitalism is the most irrational and disorganised paradoxically when it is at its most organised and rational.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no - the mechanism by which you'll profit. I see that that wording was unclear.
knowing how it works - how it's produced, marketed, etc - is part of understanding the mechanism of profit
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
perfectly encapsulated, both literally and metaphorically, in the chaos of an open trading floor
constant escape
winter withered, warm
@thirdform Interesting, that really helps re: fetish.
But seeing as there are different agendas contending to naturalize certain values/valuations, certain artificial value frameworks win out over others, no? If even by brute force?
re: post-capitalism, I admit I don't know what it'll look like, but my point was that perhaps a useful strain of marxism would consist of midwiving the current pregnant system, so to speak, searching through its field of possible outcomes, spaces of possibility etc.
And if capital doesn't have an exterior, what options are we left with, aside from learning its language and trying to channel it towards a preferred outcome? Some kind of complex systems-of-systems sorcery.
And I haven't read Capital, so for all I know I'm stuck behind one of the points already handled there.
But seeing as there are different agendas contending to naturalize certain values/valuations, certain artificial value frameworks win out over others, no? If even by brute force?
re: post-capitalism, I admit I don't know what it'll look like, but my point was that perhaps a useful strain of marxism would consist of midwiving the current pregnant system, so to speak, searching through its field of possible outcomes, spaces of possibility etc.
And if capital doesn't have an exterior, what options are we left with, aside from learning its language and trying to channel it towards a preferred outcome? Some kind of complex systems-of-systems sorcery.
And I haven't read Capital, so for all I know I'm stuck behind one of the points already handled there.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
crypto for me is the perfect current example of not investing in something you don't understand
clearly there's $ to be made if you know what you're doing, but there also scams aplenty (i.e. OneCoin)
what's hard is telling the difference between knowing what you're doing and thinking you know what you're doing
or, that's true in general, but it's especially hard with crypto bc it's so new and often poorly understood/regulated
traditional investment vehicles aren't guaranteed ofc but their mechanisms are at least better understood
investing is (obviously) all about risk tolerance, but there's a difference between taking a risk and not even understanding what kind of risk you're taking
not to say I'd never seriously invest in any, but before I did I'd want to understand it much better than I currently do
clearly there's $ to be made if you know what you're doing, but there also scams aplenty (i.e. OneCoin)
what's hard is telling the difference between knowing what you're doing and thinking you know what you're doing
or, that's true in general, but it's especially hard with crypto bc it's so new and often poorly understood/regulated
traditional investment vehicles aren't guaranteed ofc but their mechanisms are at least better understood
investing is (obviously) all about risk tolerance, but there's a difference between taking a risk and not even understanding what kind of risk you're taking
not to say I'd never seriously invest in any, but before I did I'd want to understand it much better than I currently do
Last edited:
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
smashing it and/or building a dual structure and allowing it to wither away
how realistic that is, is admittedly an open question
(and do I realize the contradiction of talking about smashing it in literally the same breath as discussing investment, but yunno just like those semiotext(e) ppl, we're all probably better off shrewdly investing in this world while hoping/working for the better one to come)
Value is a relation between people and people which is mediated through things, the commodity fetish. commodities appear to us as necessity, rather than use values on their own, so the necessity for survival is also engaged in the exchange process. It's why the surplus value of a commodity is realised when it is exchanged. If you make a table yourself, it is not a commodity. These things are historically determined. There cannot be a value before or after capitalism. There were other forms of exploitation absolutely for sure, but the idea of value within a world market is historically specific to commodity society.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Yeah I think my usage of "value" is also misinformed, seeing as I use it to refer to meaning most generally, just collapsed into positive or negative. Like this is to be pursued, and that is to be avoided, which I suppose is a fairly base and instinctual framework, before the kind of value mediation you mention comes into play and complicates things.
But your explanation does help. I never properly considered commodity fetishism, despite how often that comes up in the discourse.
re: alternative systems, I suppose the problem is still how sensitive the system would be to capitalistic thinking, and even just gangster thinking. This is where I turn to thinking about psychic energy flows, where desire is driving you, etc. Hopefully there is a more empirical manner of addressing that, however
What are the prospects of further automating capital? I still haven't figured out what a data-driven economy would look like, but I'm not convinced its impossible. In principle, you would essentially be sacrificing your privacy, rather than your labor power.
But your explanation does help. I never properly considered commodity fetishism, despite how often that comes up in the discourse.
re: alternative systems, I suppose the problem is still how sensitive the system would be to capitalistic thinking, and even just gangster thinking. This is where I turn to thinking about psychic energy flows, where desire is driving you, etc. Hopefully there is a more empirical manner of addressing that, however
What are the prospects of further automating capital? I still haven't figured out what a data-driven economy would look like, but I'm not convinced its impossible. In principle, you would essentially be sacrificing your privacy, rather than your labor power.
capital is always autonomising but that tends to make even more crisis ridden. when we consider that it is statistically impossible to feed individual capitals the outputs of all other individual capitals so that they can make decisions in lou of the total social capital. Such a thing would by nature destroy capitalism, because the larger capitals must always absorb smaller capitals, and that can only be achieved through crisis and collapse, bankrupsy etc.
constant escape
winter withered, warm
Could it not be the case that we are moving toward such a fate, towards capitalisms self-destruction, and that further automation/autonomization will just hasten it?
Cause it needs to keep growing, perhaps keep increasing the rate of growth, and such a throughput cannot be established within a closed system, recycling its own product - it needs to siphon fuel from an outside system, labor power from materiality. But even if the outside system could continue providing it fuel, the outside system itself has a limit of its own.
Riffing, not sure what to think of as diagrammatic, poetic, analogy, but that is the kind of confused state I am investigating. I'm still learning just how confusing this kind of speak is to understand.
yeah, that's what nick land says. except that rather than this superhuman intelligence it will just be mass starvation and death without a world class-based communist movement to expropriate the capitalist class and unleash the potentials of mass production.
Communism is free time and nothing else!
Communism is free time and nothing else!
Weirdly gives me a bit of confidence because I have actually managed to find my way in fitness somewhat. My money situation still a mess though!
Re. fintech, there was a big cover article in The Economist last week about Ant Group, who're the current big noise in finance circles. It gave lots of figures on their latest consolidation etc how they're about to take over the world and so on, and gave me exactly the impression Padraig describes - finanace bros using new tech to enrich each other at everyone else's expense.