Personally I think it’s silly as hell. Qualia is obviously a biological component of experience… Not some weird thing that science will never be able to put in to words.

I’ve been listening to a lot of psychology podcasts lately and for some reason people seem obsessed with the idea despite you needing to make the same logical leaps to believe it as any sort of mysticism… Maybe I am just tripping idk

  • itsPina [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    33·
    2 months ago

    The only thing I know about commodities is I am effectively one right now…

    Google AI:

    The General Formula of Capital: M-C-M’ Marx introduces the general formula for capital as M-C-M’.

    M (Money): The capitalist begins with a sum of money (M).
C (Commodities): The money is used to purchase specific commodities (C), which include the means of production (raw materials, machinery, etc.) and labor-power (L). This is represented as M-C(MP + L).
M' (More Money): These commodities are then used in the process of production to create new commodities (C') of greater value, which are then sold for a larger sum of money (M'). M' is greater than the initial M (M' > M), with the difference (M' - M) being the surplus value or profit.

    There aint no fucking way Marx was like “Money plus Commodities Plus More Money = capitalism” LOL

    • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      That is what Marx formulated, yes. And that is the formula for what capitalist exchange is, and it is a pretty ground-breaking truth, so ground breaking that it feels like basic common sense, but nobody ever actually described this historical phenomena that way before him.

      Traditional commodity money exchange under feudalism was C-M-C with the feudal lord being the primary consumer of commodities. M-C-M means that there is effectively no limit to the consumption, as it is driven not by an end goal of commodity attainment, but by the infinite accumulation of money itself.

      • itsPina [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        mmm I love having smarter people around than I.

        I have not read Vol 2 yet… I felt very satisfied with Vol 1 and use it constantly to dunk on libs on reddit… maybe i should read the rest. Or not, theres plenty of other bullshit to read.

          • itsPina [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            shits too long… marx was cookin with the manifesto. my baby brain can wrap around that. Volume 1 is already more information than the average econ 101 course covers in the US.

            I instead will simply recreate all of marx’s texts through my lived experience, as his words are pretty damn true so I dont even need to read that shit to experience it.

            • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
              6·
              2 months ago

              Ehhhh … the manifesto was a pretty slapdash editorial work for a magazine. Definitely a decent summary, but idk if it actually captures the nuances that exist within Marxist theory. Primary reliance on it tends towards a kind of vulgar Marxism, imo.

              Without reading it, how would you know you are experiencing it? Feels abit backwards imo. For me, Marxism allowed me to better articulate my experience of the world around me. It’s not about ‘recreating Marx through my lived experience’, it’s about utilizing Marxist systemic thought and heuristic practice to better explain my lived experience, which requires me to actually read theory.

              • itsPina [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
                21·
                2 months ago

                Maybe I am simply the 2nd coming of Marx, but every time I feel like I have a novel thought I find some critical theorist that has formulated it into far better words than I ever have. Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and various works of Baudrillard seem far more relevant to modern life than what Marx was talking about during industrialized society. Those works are obviously deeply rooted in Marx, but Marx simply did not predict how society would turn out.

                • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  8·
                  2 months ago

                  How would you know this if you don’t read theory?

                  He very clearly laid the groundwork for all of this in Capital. We are the primary traded commodities now, our very time and attention is the last remaining commodity and frontier to extract potential profit from. Marx ‘simply didn’t predict how society would turn out’ because Marx didn’t make predictions or prognostications like that.

                  Anytime someone is like ‘we need to move past Marx’ I know it is because they haven’t actually read Marx. It’s like people saying we need to move past Newton because Einstein’s theory of relativity exists.

                  All of the dynamics that Marx describes are still present because he was describing our modern system in it’s infancy, and as much as everyone wants to claim that we are now in a post-modern state, that is simply false, we are in ultra-modernity, where everything has been commodified.

                  • itsPina [he/him, she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
                    12·
                    2 months ago

                    I read theory dawg… just not all of capital cuz its long :X

                    I’ve read plenty of Lenin, Marx, Baudrillard, Debord, Leslie Feinberg, etc… I am not post marxist… I am simply post-Marx since he was 200 years ago. He wasn’t wrong, he simply just didn’t predict the completely corrupting nature of capitalism as emergence is basically unpredictable…

                    Marx is great at diagnosing the problem with Capitalism during industrialization. He was incapable of predicting the “Spectacle” as Guy Debord puts it as it emerged from modern media.

                    Dont discount modern thinkers! They love Marx. They utilize Marx to help us identify the contradictions of today because Labor Theory of Value doesn’t apply to the average worker who has literally zero tangible labor output.

                    Disregarding EITHER is dogmatic and ANTI Marxist in principle!