I feel like I understand communist theory pretty well at a basic level, and I believe in it, but I just don’t see what part of it requires belief in an objective world of matter. I don’t believe in matter and I’m still a communist. And it seems that in the 21st century most people believe in materialism but not communism. What part of “people should have access to the stuff they need to live” requires believing that such stuff is real? After all, there are nonmaterial industries and they still need communism. Workers in the music industry are producing something that nearly everyone can agree only exists in our heads. And they’re still exploited by capital, despite musical instruments being relatively cheap these days, because capital owns the system of distribution networks and access to consumers that is the means of profitability for music. Spotify isn’t material, it’s a computer program. It’s information. It’s a thoughtform. Yet it’s still a means of production that ought to be seized for the liberation of the musician worker. What does materialism have to do with any of this?
Well, let’s start from within a materialist framework because you’ll understand what I’m saying better if I pretend I believe in quantum theory. That mine, and that factory, are really just a big bunch of quantum strings. Or if you prefer simpler science, they’re a bunch of atoms. It’s the human brain which creates the label “mine” to assign to that hole in the dirt, and “factory” to that lump of metal. It’s a symbol we invented. That’s the simple part. The complicated part is that the quantum strings are symbols we invented too, but that would take too long to explain unless you’ve read Donald Hoffman’s theory
This stuff? I’m not convinced that consciousness is more fundamental than matter. There are certainly things we do in order to be able to parse the world by reducing things into discrete ideas, categories, etc. and this is necessarily imperfect. But if you want to engage with the world as we experience it, materialist tools are the best ones we have for understanding it with any reliability. In the context of a political project, what else are you going to use to inform your behavior besides observations of reality?
Yep, that’s a summary of the end of Hoffman’s books. It’s missing the middle and beginning, though, which explain the problems with realism and answer your question.
Hoffman says that we must take our perceptions seriously, but not literally. I know that my perceptions are a tool to help me survive and reproduce, because the theory of evolution holds true whether the world is material or ideal. So if I see a snake in the grass, I can trust my perceptions to tell me that my life may be in danger. I can trust them because that’s what they’re for, warning me about life threatening situations. But should I take the content literally? No. There’s no such thing as a snake. There’s something there, and it’s something that could kill me, but it isn’t a snake. It’s a thing more complicated than a snake which my perceptions have simplified for my benefit. I trust my perceptions to help me with survival, but not with truth.
But in the context of communism, we are talking about survival.
We are talking about survival and prosperity for all, in a context unlike that for which our perceptions have evolved. When it comes to the threats of civilisation, like “Am I going to make enough money for rent”, our brains are poorly equipped to handle that situation. Just as a fish is poorly equipped to survive on land. It is in the new context of the civilised world that we must begin using our power of reason instead of relying on nature’s instincts.