freagle

Nah, migration is fine. It was the royally decreed, religiously supported, and philosophically justified systems of rape, genocide, enslavement, and environmental devastation that was the problem…

The 1490s.

I mean you did compare them and you’re still comparing them. You’re saying they’re both bad. That’s literally a comparison.

China is selling arms to anyone and everyone that wants them. Is that meddling or mercantilism?

By comparison, the US is committing mass murder almost daily.

No, they’re not both “bad”. The US is atrocious and China is selling weapons to bad people.

Pure gold

China did not imperialize Tibet. The Mongols did.

See, the Mongols were a violent expansionist force. They occupied China and they occupied Tibet. The Chinese managed to expel the Mongols from China and rebuild their nation. Then in the early 1700, the Chinese expelled the Mongols from Tibet, freeing Tibet.

Because Tibet was unable to remain free if the Mongols would return, China established a permanent defensive military presence, establishing Tibet as a protectorate, but leaving it self-governed.

A century later the Europeans imperialized China, crushing it militarily, economically, and legally. As part of this, Tibet saw a rise in a monarchical theocracy enslaved 95% of Tibetan people, torturing and murdering them indiscriminately.

A few decades after China recovered, it returned to Tibet to free the Tibetan people from that monarchy and once against established Tibet as a self-governing independent protectorate, which it remains to this day.

In the last 400 years, I don’t think that any meaningful number of countries in the world have ever recognized Tibet as an independent state, and outside of the brutal theocratic monarchy, I don’t think the Tibetan people have ever sought to establish that they are an independent country.

Still not a good analogy because Puerto Rico was never a state of the USA. It would be more like if Long Island had been invaded by England and occupied after England beat the US in a war, and then the US had a war to kick the English off long island and then had a civil war immediately afterward and the loser fled to Long Island and said “we are the rightful government of the USA” and then Spain came by and started arming the fuck out of them while the loser of the civil war ran a fascist dictatorship for 40 years and killed tens of thousands of its own people for ever saying “maybe we could just negotiate a final surrender?”

Yes. Integration means less conflict, more collaboration, less redundancy, more dynamism, less wasteful military build up, fewer threats from the US.

One country two systems means that China provides for national defense of the entire space while Taiwan maintains a substantial amount of governing autonomy.

Think of it like Greenland choosing to be a part of Denmark to keep itself safe from the US military, except in this example Greenland would be historically part of Denmark for centuries and have a population of 99% Danes and have some parts of Greenland only 4 miles off the coast of Denmark with US troops already stationed on it training Danes on Greenland to fight the mainland.

“try using whatever your brain instead of”

Does not parse

I thought they only had one, in South Africa. Where are the other 2?

Could you restate this?

Are you comparing economic collaboration with installing military bases?

China has exactly one foreign military base. It’s in South Africa. They are very happy with it and there’s no contention.

By contrast, US military bases in Japan are notorious for raping, kidnapping, and other abuses of locals.

No. China does not also “meddle” in the rest world.

There is no “claim” to be made and there is no “reclaim” to be had against such a claim.

Taiwan is and always has been recognized as part of the country of China. That’s why the losing army in the civil war went there - because it was part of the country they were a party of.

China has stated for 70 years that the island province of Taiwan will be integrated into the rest of the governance of the country. For 50 years it has explicitly stated it will be integrated peacefully, because the CPC recognizes that doing it forcefully would actually be contradictory and create a constant guerilla warfare situation as well as invite the world’s militaries to intervene. The CPC has no intention of forcing Taiwan to integrate except if Taiwan works with foreign governments to establish a substantial and real threat to the security of the mainland.

If China waits long enough, the Western economies will collapse and Taiwan will very quickly and easily realize that the West just can’t support them anymore and when they look to see who they depend on for nearly everything, and who their relatives are and who their dominant trading partner and who can protect them militarily, it’s going to be an easy process of integrating the provincial government of Taiwan into the government of the mainland - especially since the CPC is committed to One Country Two System meaning the provincial government of Taiwan can continue operating with the same structure and same politicians and same processes as it has now.

Well… 80% of the weight humans lose is lost through the breath as CO2… Does that count?

Oh wow, that was an awesome clarification. Thank you! I see now that I was greatly confused by the analogy with the European concept of a fetish in foreign cultures, that such a thing was a set of beliefs held by a people. It did not click for me that commodity fetishization is not an analog to what the European’s believed foreign cultures believed about certain objects, but rather an analog to the role Europeans believed it to play in that society, specifically a material role, a causative role.

Thank you for that.

On the content front, I think there’s a debate to be had, but not now. I need to process and reread with this new focus. Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Genuine question, have you read any of Capital?

Yes, but I definitely don’t fully understand it. You and I disagree on the meaning of this concept, and I’m keen to learn, but if it’s not too arrogant, I’d like to continue pushing my understanding and having you critique it so I can learn where my error in understanding is.

“Fetish”, in “commodity fetish” refers to the commodity appearing to have mystical properties, when in actuality it’s an inanimate object.

I always thought this was sort of a metaphorical or poetic way of describing the phenomenon. Like, what even is an example of a “mystical property” that would apply in the context of industrial modernity? I don’t think Marx was critiquing the phenomenon of people believing their kitchen knives were sharp because of their connection with the divine or that automobiles were able to heal your epilepsy if you just laid your head against the engine block.

But it appears animate; it appears to be capable of magical things

Again, this seems metaphorical. 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.

To reiterate, I’m presenting my understanding so you can critique it and help expose my incorrect understanding.

it also makes social relations between people appear as relations between things

I understood this not to be an also but rather a restatement of the same thing referred to by the magical/mystical framing.

the relation of domination between capitalist and worker appears as an exchange of commodities, a wage in exchange for labour-power

Yes, this I see and agree with. I believe it’s consistent with my understanding and does not represent a contradiction with my understanding. Although it’s interesting to see it framed this way and think “was Marx saying this as individual human relations or as class relations, or both?”

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

Isn’t this mystical thinking? “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. Money is a perfect example of “a belief that the exchange values of goods are inherent to them” and an example of a pathway by which “social phenomena such as market value, wages and rent are reified”

Bringing it back to the video thing, content creators see what they produce as a commodity, a commodity collectively call “content”. If you’ve spent any time at all in the world of content, you know that the way people relate to the production and management of content has “absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this” (to quote Marx).

And the OP’s post is a prime example. Communication is the fundamental reality when it comes to content. Humans communicate with each other. We’ve created ways to communicate across time and space. And instead of using it to communicate things that humans need or desire to communicate, content creators see content as a way to make money. As such, they subvert the original communication goals and produce lies, rage bait, or shallow attractors and then fill that content with “calls to action” to “like and subscribe” or spend their time trying to be part of other content to spread their “brand awareness” etc, etc, etc.

All of these things feel like the magical properties Marx is describing. All of these things reify the social phenomena of rent, intellectual property, advertising revenues, etc. And none of these things bear any resemblance to real human communication, which is the fundamental “what” that content actually is.

That’s my argument. And I feel like it’s pretty solid. But again, it’s easy for me to feel that way if I have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. If I thought cheese was anything that contained milk, and I poured milk on spaghetti, it still wouldn’t mac-n-cheese but I would be real confident it was. So, please don’t take my words to be a religious argument or something I hold strongly. I’m happy to abandon my whole argument if you can help me understand what I’m missing or what I’ve assumed that makes my thinking erroneous.

And if you do engage with this, thanks for your time and effort in helping me develop a clearer understanding.

Characteristics which had appeared mysterious because they were not explained on the basis of the relations of producers with each other were assigned to the natural essence of commodities. Just as the fetishist assigns characteristics to his fetish which do not grow out of its nature, so the bourgeois economist grasps the commodity as a sensual thing which possesses pretersensual properties.

So when OP says “fuck why are videos like this. Why can’t videos just be like that” what is happening?

Is it that OP is assigning characteristics to videos that are actually expressions of the relationship between the producers and consumers of those videos, and of the distributors and the advertisers etc?

As far as I can tell, people chasing clout for money is a human relationship, one of deprevation, desperation, and manipulation. And those relationships drive behaviors which result in the characteristics of commodities, like media.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve misinterpreted Marx all this time. It’s certainly a topic I haven’t deeply wrestled with in concert with others. Happy to be corrected and learn.

And what observable effect does that have on the world that isn’t exactly what OP is describing?

It means turning everything into a commodity - every hobby, every human act, every creative endeavor, every way of life. The commodity form is fetishized and the drive to commodify everything is what OP is railing against.

Commodity Fetishization

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