communism

joined 2 years ago
[–] communism@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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:

  • Equality of different kinds of labour takes on the form of equal objectivity of products of labour as values
  • Measure of labour-time takes on the form of magnitude of value of products of labour
  • Relationships between producers take on the form of social relations between the products of labour

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).

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 2 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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 failure of workers to identify that they are members of an entire working class, rather than employees of different workplaces
  • The appearance of political/social relations as natural and transhistorical parts of the world
  • Arguably, the course of pretty much every attempted socialist project.

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?

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (7 children)

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Not what that means

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

OP said they're not that tech-savvy. gopass is likely overpowered for their use-case.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

If OP were smart (and they seem like an intelligent enough person) they would've thrown in some false red herrings to make it not seem like them. Maybe they quit a while ago, or maybe they haven't handed in their notice yet. etc. Hopefully that's the case. And hopefully they reach out to a journo to get this reported on.

On the other hand hopefully their red herrings don't get some other person falsely implicated.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

 

I'm going to be delivering an online intro to programming session to a non-technical crowd who will be "following along at home". Because it's online, I can't provide them with machines that are already set up with an appropriate development environment.

I'm familiar with Linuxes and BSDs but honestly have no idea how to get set up with programming stuff on Windows or macOS which presumably most of these people will use, so I need something I can easily instruct them on how to install, and has good cross-platform support so that a basic programming lesson will work on whatever OS the attendees are running. Remember they are non-technical so may need more guidance on installation, so it should be something that is easy to explain.

My ideas:

  • C: surely every OS comes with a C compiler pre-installed? I know C code is more platform-specific, but for basic "intro to programming" programs it should be pretty much the same. I think it's a better language for teaching as you can teach them more about how the computer actually works, and can introduce them to concepts about memory and types that can be obscured by more high-level languages.

  • Python: popular for teaching programming, for the reasons above I'd prefer not to use Python because using e.g. C allows me to teach them more about how the computer works. You could code in Python and never mention types for instance. Rmemeber this is only an intro session so we're not doing a full course. But Python is probably easy to install on a lot of OSes? And of course easy to program in too.

  • Java: good cross-platform support, allows for teaching about types. Maybe a good compromise between the benefits outlined above for C and Python?

Any opinions?

68
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by communism@lemmy.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
 

I have a server with a bunch of services just as Docker containers. I see that Proxmox is popular among the self-hosting community. I was wondering why?

I understand that running things in a VM provides better security than running them in a container. But is the difference so important given the relatively low risk that an exploit happens inside a container that leads to doing damage to the host machine?

There's also obviously the additional overhead of using Proxmox. It wouldn't be an issue for me as I should have enough resources to, say replace all my Docker containers with VMs. I'm more wondering if the security difference is so massive, or if there is another reason I'm missing why people use Proxmox.

Or am I misunderstanding how people use Proxmox? I was assuming people would use it like how you use Docker, i.e. different services get their own VM/container. If you have a different kind of setup I'd be interested in hearing it.

Edit: I would appreciate if people stop being pedantic and actually read the post. Obviously I am aware that you can run containers in VMs, or containers on bare metal alongside VMs. That's not what the question is and you know it.

 

The issue with Google's personalised search results is, imo:

  1. Not only is it not opt-in, but you can't even opt out of it. Personalised search results should be opt-in and disabled by default.
  2. The data kept on you is used to sell you ads
  3. The data kept on you will be handed over to state entities fairly easily

Given those three problems, how feasible would it be to self-host a search engine that personalises your results to show you things that are more relevant to you? Avoiding issues 1 & 2 as you're self-hosting so presumably you have made the decisions around those two things. And issue 3 is improved as you can host it off-shore if you are concerned about your domestic state, and if you are legally compelled to hand over data, you can make the personal choice about whether or not to take the hit of the consequences of refusing, rather than with a big company who will obviously immediately comply and not attempt to fight it even on legal grounds.

A basic use-case example is, say you're a programmer and you look up ruby, you would want to get the first result as the programming language's website rather than the wikipedia page for the gemstone. You could just make the search query ruby programming language on any privacy-respecting search engine, but it's just a bit of QoL improvement to not have to think about the different ways an ambiguous search query like that could be interpreted.

 

I've finally started having some free time lately and have been working through my Steam library, most of which is Windows games I'm playing with Proton.

I wanted to install some mods, and wanted a mod manager for this. Nexus Mods has Vortex, which is not available for Linux. In any case, running Windows games on Linux through Proton on Steam is fairly specific; the game files will be at certain locations on a Linux filesystem, not at the same locations as they would be on a Windows filesystem. So I think I would need software that has specifically been designed for this use-case (Windows games from Steam running on Proton).

Are there any such mod managers out there? What do other people do when playing games on Linux? I can't be the only person who wants to play video games with mods.

 

One example is bread. I was baking bread the other day, and obviously the cost of the ingredients I put in the loaf are less than the cost of buying a loaf at the supermarket, but that doesn't include the cost of putting the oven on.

Or dry beans vs canned beans; does the cost of boiling the beans actually bring the cost up to be equivalent to canned beans?

I know that everyone's energy costs are different so it's not possible for someone to do the calculations for you, but I've never bothered to do them for my own case because bills I get from the energy company just tell me how much I owe them for the month, not "you put the oven on for 30 minutes on the 17th of June and that cost you X". It sounds like a headache to try calculate how much I pay for energy per meal. But if someone else has done that calculation for themselves I'd be interested to read it and see how it works out. My intuition is that, in general, it's cheaper to make things yourself (e.g. bread or beans like above), but I couldn't say that for sure without calculating, which as I said seems like it would be a pain in the ass.

 

Meaning that the author is maybe not very good at their craft, but inadvertently created a work with a lot more meaning than they intended, or they accidentally did something quite clever that they didn't mean to. Or maybe a work which is good in its own right but there's a particular "unofficial" interpretation which makes it so much better.

Obviously a bit of this question involves knowing authorial intentions, but in a lot of instances authors have been able to state that they did or didn't intend a particular interpretation.

 

It appears to work fine (it contains my home partition for my main machine I daily drive) and I haven't noticed signs of failure. Not noticeably slow either. I used to boot Windows off of it once upon a time which was incredibly slow to start up, but I haven't noticed slowness since using it for my home partition for my personal files.

Articles online seem to suggest the life expectancy for an HDD is 5–7 years. Should I be worried? How do I know when to get a new drive?

 

I was interested in hosting my own mail server that provides a similar level of privacy for users as Protonmail, ie the server admin cannot read any emails, even those which are not E2EE with PGP. Is there a self-hostable solution to this?

I'm aware the server admin can't read emails that were sent encrypted using the user's PGP key, but most emails I get are automated emails from companies/services/etc without the option to upload a public key to send the user encrypted email. If you're with a service like Protonmail, the server admin still cannot read even these emails.

 

I don't own any controllers.

I started playing Dark Souls 3 which I now understand has a controller strongly recommended. I may as well just look into getting a controller of some kind as I have a few games that have somewhat janky kbm controls and are better enjoyed with a controller.

I just wanted to ask for general advice about what controller to get in terms of compatibility. Also if someone has made a controller that's more in the spirit of foss that also works fine with Steam and Proton games that would be nice?

I know Steam is pretty good with Playstation controllers and I used to use a PS controller (don't remember what generation) with some native Linux Steam games, not sure how the whole PS vs Xbox controller thing is affected by running games through Proton if at all? If it matters let me know, and I'll see if I can procure a controller for myself.

 

You still have to pay for it because it costs money to make. But it's completely open-source beer so you can recreate it yourself if you don't want to buy it pre-made, or you want to modify the recipe.

I have no idea how to make beer otherwise I'd have a crack at this shitpost myself...

view more: next ›