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?

  • WithoutFurtherDelay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I used to think it was the other way around, like you, but I got radicalised by intersectional feminism.

    Huh? In my experience, thinking that the material is defined by the mind is usually the opposite of intersectional. It excludes neurodivergent people heavily, implies their experiences could be “fixed” by just “pulling themselves up by the bootstraps” and “becoming neurotypical”.

    • DroneRights [it/its]@hexbear.netOP
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      1 year ago

      Actually, it’s realism and materialism that are exclusionary to neurodivergent people. Because society always assumes that objective reality aligns with neurotypical perception, and that neurodivergent perceptions are wrong simply for being different. It’s intersectional feminism that argues much of the world we live in, if not all of it, is made of social constructs.