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?
That’s not what materialism means in the context of communist theory.
When communists talk about materialism, we generally refer to historical materialism, the theory that a society’s culture and politics (its superstructure) are shaped by its material forces (its base). This isn’t strictly a one-way street, mind - it’s cyclical, with each exerting some influence on the other, though the base dominates. See this diagram. This view is generally contrasted with liberal idealism, which assumes that ideas and culture are the dominant drivers of society.
To give an example in the most straightforward terms possible, let’s take the question: “What is the connection between the 19th century US southern aristocrats’ Christianity and their support for slavery?”
Idealism says that these aristocrats were pro-slavery because they interpreted the Bible to be pro-slavery.
Materialism says that these aristocrats interpreted the Bible to be pro-slavery because they were pro-slavery.
Ultimately, they were following their economic and material interests in a society in which Christianity was the dominant religion. Anything they may have believed or professed to believe about Christianity emerged from that.
Well I sure disagree with everything you just said. I think it’s reductive, simplistic, and appeals to problematic realist sensitivities. What does everything you just said have to do with communism?
What does everything you just said have to do with communism?
It’s the entire basis of communist theory. Capitalism cannot be “fixed” because its basic structure consists of two classes with different relations to the means of production, the bourgeoise and the proletariat, who have diametrically opposed material interests. The way to resolve this contradiction is to do away with the parasitic capitalist class and reorganize society so that it consists only of workers.
This is 101-level Marxism. If you don’t agree with any of it, then, uh, you may be on the wrong site.
To be entirely fair, anarchists and other non-Marxists are completely allowed on this site
I agree with everything you just said and don’t see how it depends upon the stuff I disagreed with
If material reality (or, to hopefully bridge a terminology barrier, our perceptual interface) didn’t matter, that would mean that the struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie is fundamentally inane, and would suggest an entirely different approach other than communism is necessary.
I agree, however, I think our perceptual interface matters
If you think it matters, and I have repeatedly suggested how treating the perceptual interface with respect would be identical to the function of Marxist materialism, what are we even arguing about?
Idealism, the opposite of materialism, when translated to this new conception of reality, would just be believing that things we consciously make up matter more than our perceptual interface.
That seems to be moving the goalposts quite a bit.
so you are not a marxist, bye lol :)
i’m joking. but you really need to read about marxism.
What does everything you just said have to do with communism?
It’s the very basics of our theory. and it’s basically what i told you before.
ofc, you can believe in socialism without being a marxist. You might be interested in reading Polanyi for example.
No, I do understand everything you just said, I just think it’s wrong and that a properly communist analysis would demonstrate that. Are you telling me that historical materialism is just one of multiple ways of arriving at communist conclusions?
Half an hour ago, you didn’t know what historical materialism meant. You are in no position to tell anyone what a “properly communist analysis” would demonstrate.
No investigation, no right to speak.
i think they must be very young, no need to be hostile :)
i find this whole discussion kinda cute to be honest…
I knew what historical materialism meant, just didn’t see what it had to do with communism other than Marx believed in it. I don’t really understand Marx’s thinking in associating the two, but this thread is helping. It seems like y’all are already materialists and just need a material analysis of class because you’re not ready to understand the big stuff.
ok this is definitely an elaborate bit
Our problematic, highest-concept elaborate bitposter was banned two days before this account was created
It seems like y’all are already materialists and just need a material analysis of class because you’re not ready to understand the big stuff.
Oh, fuck off
That quote should be a site tagline lmfao
I fully understand the philosophical perspective you’ve adopted, I simply disagree with it.
Communism is usually associated with historical materialism, the theory that everyone here is trying to explain to you. However, there have been other forms of socialism before and after Marx. You might find interesting Henri de Saint-Simon and his theories, Paul Lafargue, or for another, more recent example of non-Marxist socialist, Karl Polanyi.
If you don’t believe in Marxism, that’s okay. But you need to study it first, and based on your original post, it might require some more time, patience, and reading.
I think you and a lot of people in this thread have confused disagreement for ignorance due to a failure of cognitive empathy. Which is understandable, because neurotypical cognitive empathy doesn’t work properly on autistic people. I’ll check out those sources you linked.
lol, i see vast agreement in the answer you got. but you need to be a bit more careful and thoughtful. your ideas so far are a confused potpourri. you need to read what marxist theory and communism are, more than a few slogans. and this can be done just alone, with a book. perhaps start here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/marx-a-very-short-introduction-9780198821076 (Marx: A Very Short Introduction - Peter Singer)
Do not read that, Singer is a terrible interpreter of Marx
Respectfully, it has been repeatedly proven that human beings respond to their environment with more intensity than their own minds. This is verifiable by just checking in with your own emotions at any point.
This doesn’t mean that the environment fulfills some specific sit of criteria or that I’m a “realist” instead of an “idealist”. I don’t think what makes up the fundamental environment matters nearly as much as the idea that people are affected by that environment and often can’t help it.
This has to be true, by necessity, for anything at all to make sense. Think about this: If you were never exposed to anything, ever, and had absolutely no senses, including pain or bodily sensations, since the moment you were born, how would you be able to formulate thoughts or take action? You couldn’t, there would be nothing to make up their content. This demonstrates that the material is essential to human thought.
Regardless of if reality is real or not, our fundamental experiences are still defined by it, and that’s what the root of Marxist materialism is. Not a belief that metaphysics aren’t real, not a belief that physical matter is of a certain character or is even unassailable in it’s reality, but a belief that human beings are fundamentally altered and influenced by it.
it has been repeatedly proven that human beings respond to their environment with more intensity than their own minds
And it has been repeatedly proven that I respond to science fiction with more intensity than soap operas. All you have identified is that our perceptual interface is more compelling than thoughts of our conscious creation, not that our perceptual interface comes from outside the mind.
This has to be true, by necessity, for anything at all to make sense. Think about this: If you were never exposed to anything, ever, and had absolutely no senses, including pain or bodily sensations, since the moment you were born, how would you be able to formulate thoughts or take action? You couldn’t, there would be nothing to make up their content. This demonstrates that the material is essential to human thought.
I don’t find Hume’s thought experiment as compelling as you do. If I accept your premise that senses are required for sensation, that still does not mean senses must be directed at the world. They could also be directed at other conscious agents, or at parts of the self.
Regardless of if reality is real or not, our fundamental experiences are still defined by it, and that’s what the root of Marxist materialism is. Not a belief that metaphysics aren’t real, not a belief that physical matter is of a certain character or is even unassailable in it’s reality, but a belief that human beings are fundamentally altered and influenced by it.
Sure, but if we were to abolish the social construct of reality, communism would still be plenty possible and the best way of doing things.
All you have identified is that our perceptual interface is more compelling than thoughts of our conscious creation, not that our perceptual interface comes from outside the mind
And it doesn’t need to
Idk if you’re doing a bit, but assuming that you’re serious and having read through some of your comments below, I think the problem that you’re having is largely based in a misunderstanding of what people tend to mean when they argue that something is socially constructed. And, relatedly, that you’re working from an opposition between the real and the imaginary that can’t account for the complexity of their actual relation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your basic assumption seems to be that if something is socially constructed then it is imaginary/‘ideal’ and, therefore, that isn’t real/material. And, further, that if something is socially constructed then it emerges as a creation of the individual human mind.
The problem with the first assumption is that socially constructed forms are still real and material forms. Even what at first glance might appear as immaterial forms (such as the dominant ideas of a society or music) emerge from within a historical and material context that works to structure them and provide the conditions of possibility for certain ideas and forms to emerge, and these likewise operate back upon that context in real ways. To use your example of the commodities produced by the music industry, the apparent ‘immateriality’ of a song still depends upon a wide range of material forms. Among these are the material forms of the instruments used in its creation, the historical traditions of music and the material forms necessary for archiving and preserving them into the present of the song’s production, the material networks that facilitate and determine the song’s distribution (which include everything from the record companies that sign and promote artists, to the mines in which the raw materials that are used in the production of both the instruments being played and the computers and speakers upon which the song eventually comes to be heard are excavated). You can see here already that the relationship between the apparently ‘ideal’ and the ‘material’ is far more complex than a simple binary opposition.
This leads to the problem with the second assumption that you seem to be making, which is that you seem to be positing a genuinely idealist understanding of ideas and the human subject in which ideas emerge in the manner of a virgin birth from the individual human subject (this being the only form that would preserve their genuinely ‘ideal’ being from being muddied by a dirty materialism). The problem with this belief is that it fails to account for the historical production of that subject - a historical production which is, ironically, a key idea within social constructivist theories. Ideas are necessarily social forms, their existence implies intersubjectivity through the existence of language. In this sense, ideas necessarily have a material dimension that fatally undermines the kind of idealist conception that you seem to be expressing. This is because our individual subjectivity and thus our ability to have ideas emerges within a substrate that is outside and beyond us. We are already structured in certain ways as a condition of being able to think and this is the basis of a materialist understanding
I missed out on a lot of discussion, but if it hasn’t been linked, I am once again asking every Hexbear to read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
The gist of what Marxists believe is that all things come from a material reality, even intangible things like music, religion, and ideas. They come from the human brain, which is itself influenced by the material world it observes and interacts with. So I would say that even though Spotify and the songs on there aren’t “materials” in a certain sense, they are still things that require a material reality to produce them. You cant have music or spotify without musicians and programmers.
Yeah, I used to agree with marxists on all that when I was a baby commie, but then I got radicalised further to the left and I no longer believe in a material reality essential to cognition or perception. And I don’t see how agreeing with Marx on all that is necessary to maintain a belief in communism. I’m sure it’s helpful if you’re already a realist and you need a realist reason to become a communist, but I don’t think it’s useful at all for idealists. That’s my synthesis between what the realists said and what I said.
That’s not getting more left, sounds more like getting confused about solipsism or something.
Have you read Hegel? I think you don’t really get the philosophical foundations of Marxism but that’s the domain in which you are trying to make criticisms.
I think the materialist view is important to understand what drives people and what drives history. You can believe in communism, but materialism can help u understand the reality under which you live and through which you must bring forth communism. Bringing forth communism is difficult enough but probably impossible if you have no understanding of the historical period you are living through, the material conditions that make people reactionaries or bootlikers or demsocs etc. It’s by looking at the material reality that you can understand (ie. hopefully predict) the actions taken by capitalists and imperialists, the contradictions reigning, the material needs and wants driving things.
of course marxists can say communism is inevitable to follow from capitalism and understanding what i mention above is not necessary so i dunno
But I understand all of those things without materalism. I understand history and science and labour relations as products of the human mind, and I can apply discoveries of the scientific method to make accurate predictions about the perceptual world. And I understand why people adopt certain positions in relation to class struggle and how they’re related to the perceived world. No materialism needed.
I understand history and science and labour relations as products of the human mind
this is an idealist perspective common among liberals. materialists view it in the opposite direction: the human mind is a product of the material world. our the natural (material) world amd our relationship to labor and production shape our understanding of the world and our consciousness. the world isnt changed by ideas, ideas are changed by the world. actions lead to societal change. liberals think if a majority of people thought a certain way, the world will change. Marxists hold a materialist perspective that opposes this and instead posits that society changes when people act to enact change
I wish that was true. If liberals weren’t such huge realists they’d be less transphobic. I mean, I’ve even taken transphobia from liberals on Hexbear who had a problem with my gender for being incompatible with reality. Realists always act like that. If mainstream liberals were idealists, it wouldn’t have taken until last week for me to be open about my gender on a public site. I wouldn’t be scared of them doing hate crimes at me for being unreal.
i said it was common among liberals, not predominant. in this context, realists believe that political and social change come solely from those that seek to rule. might makes right and all that. it doesnt really have much to do w bigotry other than realists tend to hold more bigoted views bc those in power uphold bigotry. idealists are still usually bigoted in some way just bc of how they are socialized
and i have seen the ppl on here doubting your gender, which is rude and im sorry you have to see that. but the majority here have been acting in good faith toward you and most questions have been to actually learn abt dronegender/swarmgender and NPD acceptance. ik its hard to find a community that doesnt immediately reject you, im sorry, ik that must be hard, but try to act in good faith bc a lot of ur activity here seems like attempts to stir the pot
Yeah, I am acting in good faith. And I do appreciate the open mindedness and support from mods. I’ve seen people come to understand my gender and neurotype and that’s awesome. So I would characterise a lot of the people who initially reacted with hostility as well meaning liberals. Whereas the leftists who already had an education on xenogenders accepted me instantly, like that one angelgender person.
But I have a whole lot experience of denialism of my gender identity, and since I don’t expect anyone here to have been in the same subreddits or discord servers or local orgs as I have and seen this for themselves, talking about through-lines that I’ve seen here is the best way to make my claims verifiable for others and prove I know what I’m talking about and I’m talking about it in good faith. So I talk about the realist bigotry here as a case study to help others understand the rest of my life. And the bottom line is: people who put reality above feelings are cruel to trans people. Trans “allies” who have been convinced reality is compatible with binary trans people are usually still enbyphobic. It’s only the nonrealists who act with true acceptance. Because I will always have to justify my existence to realists, and even if science and kindness are on my side, it’ll still be a struggle to get them to open their minds for the next marginalised experience
Because scientific socialism derives itself from a materialist analysis of human history. Scientific socialists realize you cannot understand history and society without analyzing the mode of production, which in turn depends on the relations of production and the productive forces. Let me give a brief example. Capitalism could not exist without certain technologies and certain classes. Advances in textile manufacturing that used hydropower (productive forces) allowed for the private ownership of factories owned by capitalists that employ an industrial proletariat (relations of production). The competing interests of these classes results in class struggle. Certain economic laws - namely the tendency for the rate of profit to fall due to the rising organic composition of capital (in other words, firms increasingly automate to gain a relative profit but once the entire industry automates, they lose profitability) - make this economic arrangement more untenable. Over time, capitalism makes it harder and harder for itself to continue, and the class struggle inherent in the system will overthrow it. That is roughly the materialist/scientific socialist conception of capitalism/communism.
As a worker, you’re likely to have an impulse towards communistic ideals like “people should have access to the stuff they need to live” because it is in your class interest. But the bourgeoisie genuinely don’t believe in this. Sadly, these ideals are not universal. A historical example would be the European enslavement of Africans. There were many liberals who despised it on principle, but it was an integral part of the economic system as well as being in the direct class interest of the ruling class for a very long time.
There were non-materialist communists. They were the utopian socialists of the 19th century.
Hope this helps, sorry if I got anything wrong.
Well, I agree with everything you just said, and I don’t think it supports a materialist conclusion. There is a point of friction in our beliefs, which is where you say technologies are required for capitalism to exist. I agree, but that’s only because we have different ideas underlying our conception of “technology”. For example, I would say the invention of currency is just as essential to capitalism as the mill. And currency is surely, as you’ll agree, a cultural technology. I also argue that mills are a cultural technology too, because they are merely a means of shuffling about symbols within our perception to grant us pleasures such as having warm clothes.
I also argue that mills are a cultural technology too, because they are merely a means of shuffling about symbols within our perception to grant us pleasures such as having warm clothes.
Surely the actual utility of a dollar, a warm coat, and a mill are not all the same, right? Your comment here kind of sounds like you’re saying that because things are cultural technology (or symbols, which all things are), they therefore are purely symbolic, that they’re somehow not real or useful outside of their cultural symbolism. This is true for money, which would be useless in a society that does not use money, but untrue for things like clothes (which can always keep people warm or protected from the elements) or mills (which can always act as shelter, or places for people to do things, for example).
A dollar, a coat, and mill are only useful because they can bring me pleasure. Which is a mental construct. If I were an organism that could not experience pleasure, like, say, an advanced robot, then all three of those things would be equally useless to me. Perhaps I’m a robot that believes in helping others and will give the coat to a cold human to make them feel better, but again, that’s still just mental constructions - my philosophy and the human’s pleasure.
ok now mentally construct a pig pooping on its own balls
they can bring me pleasure. Which is a mental construct
The commodities are the materialization of our subjective needs, and our needs are a ‘subjectification’ of some practical experience, some interaction with the material world. It seems that the main problem with your arguments is that you assume the mind is it’s own entity, without a beginning and without any relation to the material world, when, in fact, the mind is a product of the material world.
If I were (…) an advanced robot, then
Are you arguing real life or a world that you thought up just now? Surely you can exemplify your point with real life, if you think it’s correct?
It seems that the main problem with your arguments is that you assume the mind is it’s own entity, without a beginning and without any relation to the material world, when, in fact, the mind is a product of the material world.
Not quite. My problem with your ideas is that I think the material world is a product of the mind. I used to think it was the other way around, like you, but I got radicalised by intersectional feminism.
Are you arguing real life or a world that you thought up just now? Surely you can exemplify your point with real life, if you think it’s correct?
I was exemplifying my point about real life by imagining a situation in which I didn’t value things for pleasure. I’ll exemplify my point about a fictional world by referring you back to the point I was making about real life.
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”.
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.
Not quite. My problem with your ideas is that I think the material world is a product of the mind
Yes, the same thing I criticised - the mind preceding material reality, preceded by nothing. Needs springing into existence by themselves and emerging before the material.
Btw, how does the “the mind creates the material world” point of view analyses, let’s say, groups of native amazonian tribes mostly not wearing any sorts of clothes before first interacting with europeans, or even today? Or the poverty of Haiti, for example?
Anyway, if you’re really interest in finding arguments and not just adopting a point of view and ending thought right there, this question is maybe the most basic of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. That Vietnam book Luna Oi translated lays it out in very simple language while providing a lot of further sources, so it’s a good place to start, and Bukharin wrote a book that goes a little bit deeper.
It’s trying to quote Donald Hoffman but i don’t think it works here
Donald Hoffman thinks our perception of reality is basically a false matrix which is an effective tool of evolutionary survival. So not only are our perceptions illusory, but likely so is much of our science. Despite that, it’s still useful, because it works within our own interface/simulation of reality.
Hoffman explained it like a computer GUI, where, it looks like we’re putting a file in the trash bin, but in reality the computer is modifying a bunch of bits and bytes around.
I think Hoffman’s language when writing their theory fucking sucked and would naturally lead to problems of misunderstanding like this, an issue no doubt caused by the capitalistic incentive towards clickbait and pseudoscientific-adjacent hype.
They claim multiple times that “reality does not exist”, but at no point make any kind of argument which could assert that. Everything they say merely implies that the human conception of reality is likely a flawed one created for evolutionary advantage and which cannot comprehend large swathes of reality, which checks out, but isn’t nearly as exciting
Hoffman thinks space and time are illusory, for instance, but not because there’s no underlying mechanics at all and we made everything up from literally nothing. They are illusory because they are a fundamental part of our “interface”, which is illusory, but is also part of us fundamentally interacting with a real world, which has to exist for any of this theory to make sense
Like a programming library
I’m not sure what you mean by mills shuffling around symbols but about currency:
Currency did not exist and could not exist until the productive capabilities of society and early ruling classes required a kind of “universal equivalent” to move around use-values better than simple bartering could provide. Bartering is only useful if you can make some use out of the commodity you’re bartering for directly. For example, if society is in a position where single individuals own like, a thousand kilos of grain, it would be far more useful to exchange the grain for a currency, or a “universal equivalent” to exchange for many different kinds of commodities than 1 or a small set of commodities you can obtain by simple bartering.
It is true that currency is a kind of “cultural technology” and that it is necessary for capitalism to exist but it evolved out of the necessity of material circumstances. Hope that helps to understand lol, I’m not so good at writing
Currency did not exist and could not exist until the productive capabilities of society and early ruling classes required a kind of “universal equivalent” to move around use-values better than simple bartering could provide.
Just a nitpick: the barter economy is a myth that came from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which has since been repeated ad infinitum in every economics textbook.
There is no evidence of barter economy ever existing in human society until after money has been invented, when anthropologists started to look into it (I think they found one in a primitive tribe in Polynesia and a couple other random cases but that’s about it).
Money has always existed as debt, both David Graeber and Michael Hudson have collaborated and written about the role of money in early human societies - Graeber on the anthropology side, and Hudson on the economic history side.
Yeahh, tbh I didn’t really mean all of what is implied by “barter economy”. “Simple bartering” was just a phrase I used to mean the process of 2 producers exchanging use-values for use-values directly.
That being said, I didn’t know that! I should know that lol. I’ll look into it, thanks.
I’m not sure what you mean by mills shuffling around symbol
Take a screwdriver as an example. Its purpose is to screw and unscrew screws. Screws are a social construct. I can use the social construct of screws to fix the social construct of my air conditioner. That’ll create the social construct of cold air, which will give me the pleasant sensation of staying cool in the summer. The screwdriver is just a tool for manipulating my perceptual interface to grant me pleasure. It’s a cultural technology.
Interesting ideas. But if all humans disappeared suddenly, the screw, air conditioner, and screwdriver would still exist as specific configurations of atoms. It is true that humans have conceptions of what those things are but they are merely reflections of the real material things, not the things themselves. If the air conditioner activated on its own, after all humans were gone, it would still measurably cool the air (as in slow the speed of interactions between the molecules of the air).
The more OP comments, the less I believe OP is here in good faith, tbh. It’s starting to feel like the user is here to waste people’s time, prodding others to jump through infinite hoops of explaining basic theory while brushing everything off by saying “it’s a social construct”, “it’s perception”, etc…
like an unstoppable force (hexbearian posters) meeting an immovable object (wrecker that says everything is imaginary and nothing is real)
Yeahh idk lol. I’m just having fun at least just vibing to some music and replying. It’s good mental exercise at least! I really need to reread Capital though
Haha, that’s valid. If nothing else, a good reminder for me not to take it so seriously 🙏 And also to read more theory
I’ve seen it around and don’t think it’s a wrecker
Yeah, I feel bad about having to look at the user’s other posts, but I can see a lot more about its way of understanding itself and the world after doing that. It’s got a unique way of approaching things, which differ from and contradict what I know, have lived, and have studied about politics, psychology, etc. - so much so that the discussion is a bit frustrating, but I gotta remember not to become a bigger a stinker when I think I smell something afoul
It couldn’t measurably cool the air, because there would be nobody to measure it. But that’s beside the point. The real point is: there would be nobody to believe in those atoms, which would render then nonexistent, because atoms are a mental construct. Even a materialist would agree with me there, if they’d heard of protons and neutrons.
How do you explain matter existing before humans could conceive of it?
We didn’t discover atoms in the sense of revealing some True Thing. We slowly built successive models of a set of phenomena we identify as atoms, which we continue to revise to make more reliable in descriptive and predictive applications and from there host of other applications.
From the best of our understanding it seems like matter exists independent of our belief or observation, which works well enough that we continue to use this understanding.
OP seems to reject this in favor of something like phenomena behaving in a way that’s generated from our consciousness.
Marx talks about the social necessity of currency for capitalism in like the first chapter or two of Capital Volume I. And everything described thus far involves the duality of technology as a thing in itself as well as a social relation.
Have you read Marx?
itt: proof you should never seriously read david hoffman.
What does materialism have to do with any of this?
material reality, in this case, is the concept of what does not go away once you stop believing in it. if it helps to view it like that, even if you don’t believe in physicality, then there you go
Yeah, I don’t think the idea of stuff existing when you stop believing in it is relevant to communism, except for how people who believe in reality need to have communism explained to them in real terms.
materialism = ideals and beliefs come from material reality. The exact character of material reality, be it an illusion, a real thing, or a physically existing 3d hologram, is not nearly as important as the realization that ideals and beliefs stem from it
Being against the idea of this is problematic because it implies you care more about what we think, than what we do
I think
Matter in the context of of philosophical materialism just refers to the external world that humans find themselves within. I suppose you don’t have to believe in the explanations given by the field of physics to recognize this world as something that exists, if that’s what you mean. Philosophical materialism is just the position that this external world and it’s relationships (including to humans) have the primary role in determining human ideas, and that ideas have no other basis than the material structure and internal relationships of the human brain (no Ideals floating around in the ether that humans have discovered).
Materialism became a core component of Marxism, scientific socialism, and the communist movement from the very beginning in contrast to other studies of political economy and philosophy of the time (and today!) because Marxism seeks to explain and analyze why society is the way it is and how to make it better by understanding the only observable, testable universe we know of: the universe of material things and their relationships that we live within. This stands in contrast to, for example, liberal political philosophy which holds that capitalism is just the natural, most advanced, and final state of society that humans were always inherently going to create. In other words, capitalism is just a fact of reality and a natural idea that humans have discovered and that it’s this idea that is responsible for creating capitalist society.
Check out this essay by Mao Zedong if you wanna read further in better words than my own lol: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_30.htm
I suppose you don’t have to believe in the explanations given by the field of physics to recognize this world as something that exists
Well actually the cutting edge of physics is beginning to get at the idea that this world doesn’t exist. And evolutionary science has already gotten there with the fitness beats truth theorem and the interface theory of perception.
The conclusion I’m getting from this thread is that marxists were already materialists before they learned about communism, and they need a material theory of communism because they wouldn’t understand the ideal theory of communism.
Well actually the cutting edge of physics is beginning to get at the idea that this world doesn’t exist.
No offense, but do you have any proof? That’s kinda the thing about idealism, once you become separated from trying to analyze the testable, material world around us you can kinda just assert whatever you want to be true. That’s why Marxists care so much about materialism. Deviating from it can result in some really weird, ineffective stuff. Like maybe we just need to get enough people together to think communism into existence.
Donald Hoffman explains it very well in his book The Case Against Reality. Here’s the short version of the Fitness Beats Truth theorem:
If our ancestors had evolved to see truth, then they’d have all died before passing on their genes, because they would have been outcompeted by the organisms which perceive fitness. Perceiving truth is a waste of energy and resources. Creatures that perceive fitness will always adapt better to the environment with fewer resources.
Truth is separate from material reality and as a post modern neo Marxist I am uniquely in a position to say that I do not believe in truth but do believe in material things existing.
Do I believe they exist in the way they are presented to us in our experience? I don’t know. I don’t really care, either. The way we perceive reality being “true” (an objective definition of which does not exist) or not doesn’t matter nearly as much as it being consistent. I suppose the existence of things we can’t perceive outside of our perceptual interface is intriguing (and possibly concerning), but until we can reliably survive as a species and not kill each other, that should probably be put on the back burner
Our perception of reality isn’t consistent, though. Our perceptions can be changed quite easily. Optical illusions can show us things that aren’t there, schizophrenia can convince us of things that aren’t true, and religion and magick can change how we interpret what we see into a worldview. And actually, these facts are deeply relevant to surviving as a species and not killing each other –
When a transphobe looks at a trans woman, they see a man. When an ally looks at a trans woman, they see a woman. Perceiving a trans woman to be a man is a form of life threatening violence. It is our ethical duty to perceive trans people as they wish to be perceived, both as workers maintaining class solidarity and as fundamentally decent people. Trans liberation requires that we see our perceptions as malleable, and within our control. To pass the buck onto an imagined “material reality” and demand reality control our perceptions for us is irresponsible, transphobic, and violent.
But we control the reality too? How is that irresponsible? It implies it’s just more difficult than sitting in a room and thinking super hard
Demanding that trans people undergo visible transition and changes in gender presentation before we will perceive them as they wish is violent. Just change your thoughts, don’t put the burden on the person who may die if their efforts to transition fail.
I can’t say I’ve heard of that book. I’ll have to look into it.
About your theorem:
Tbh, I just kinda see it as an affirmation of the kind of materialism Marxism is talking about. There no eternal “Truth” to be perceived, it’s all relative. In the context of natural selection, maybe truth is the best strategy to survive. When organism are struggling for the best fitness they are entering into a complex web of material relationships with their environment. This process of natural selection has been going on for far longer than humans have been able to conceive of it. Marxism is just the theory of evolution by natural selection but for the development of human society. Unless I missed the point of your theorem…
I think you missed at least some of the point. Note that the theory of evolution holds true within any system of competing agents capable of hereditary changes. Even for memes, which can only exist in the minds of intelligent species. The theory of evolution holds true even in situations where the environment in which human beings truly exist is not a world. There must be an environment of some kind, yes, but that environment does not require matter, energy, spacetime, or any number of other symbols from our interface to exist. The FBT theorem does not depend upon there being a world in order to hold true. Rather, it erodes the concept of there being a world such as humans would understand it to be a world, because it confirms that our perceptions of the world are perceptions of fitness, not truth. Our reality is simply a tool to help us survive and reproduce. It is not passed down from God to show us truth.
That’s certainly interesting, but it implies that there is still some kind of reality, just that the way we interpret it is somewhat false, which is probably correct. This is not at all incompatible with Marxist materialism, because our perceptions of reality not being literally true is irrelevant to if we’re influenced by it or not. It merely suggests that our minds evolved a specific way of perceiving reality and, until we can fundamentally alter our brain chemistry, it will be the best we’ve got.
We can fundamentally alter our perceptions. That’s what the entire field of chaos magic is for. And chaos magic is essential to trans liberation, pagan coexistence, and, in my opinion, the revolution itself.
The difference between perception and truth is not a criticism of the materialist perspective and would arguably align with it better than the alternative.
Though I’d say that anyone making sweeping generalizations about evolutionary fitness either doesn’t understand it or is oversimplifying for effect.
I’ve taken several undergraduate courses in evolutionary biology and done a 4th year research course. I really struggle to understand what is being said.
I often try to take what others say prima facie and interpret it my own way, that is in a scientific and materialist way.
Perhaps one interpretation could be the sum total information available to our sensory organs needs to be filtered through heuristics to determine what is useful in order to contend with immediate needs so as to survive and reproduce. Any deviation from the ‘analog’ world or of whatever external material world there is and our own reductionist understanding hides the truth from us. Therefore the claim is the ownership of an epistemic advantage or insight unavailable to most others. This treads on relativism and solipsism, since if this is true, it does not do very much to help the rest of us.
I don’t know, I tried to engage respectfully but I’m still drawing blanks.
I think the academic in question is making a very simple claim while using obscuring language and methodologies.
It’s literally just that perception can do a good, and even better job of increasing fitness by latching on to not-exactly-true things, and in fact does not necessarily ever need to actually identify true things. Just true-ish things such that there can be useful response to the environment.
Kind of like how we see faces where they don’t exist. Our brains have evolved to recognize certain patterns as faces, which is surely very useful for fitness in various contexts (recognizing another human). But the perception is buggy, it’s fuzzy, it makes a pretty good number of false positives. Did we evolve to see the “truth” of existing faces, or just an approximation?
Anyways the topic is cool but I’m convinced OP doesn’t understand it.
There is no evolutionary niche better served by perceiving truth than fitness, except perhaps for the niche that humanity has created for itself by inventing technology that is capable of destroying the Earth’s habitability to human life. And a situation like that has never existed on earth before now, so there is no way any organism can have adapted to it.
It’s very unclear what you’re trying to say because you’re using terms with common definitions in evolutionary biology but in ways that make no sense, but also difficult to understand as profound or meaningful if I try to understand them with other definitions.
For example, fitness isn’t an evolutionary niche at all. In evolution, niches are relevant to fitness, as they are patterns of (often mutually-excluding) ecological roles played by different organisms over time and space, suggesting some common constraints and situations in the overall fitness landscape. But fitness is not itself a niche. I have no idea what you mean by niche otherwise, but it doesn’t make in the context of the field you’re wading into.
Anyways I’ll try to explain this more by addressing the rest.
the niche that humanity has created for itself by inventing technology that is capable of destroying the Earth’s habitability to human life.
This is also not a niche. No other organism, to our knowledge, has such a role or can have it ecologically framed. It’s like saying Elon Musk is the best person on the “South African failson that owns SpaceX” team. It’s just the one guy, there’s no team.
And a situation like that has never existed on earth before now, so there is no way any organism can have adapted to it.
So what? There’s no clear point here.
It really feels like you’ve read some pop science and maybe didn’t really understand it. Do you think that’s possible?
“but I just don’t see what part of it requires belief in an objective world of matter.”
that’s not what materialism means, at least in marxist therm. materialism means humans facts are dependent on space and time, so to say. so, the relationships of productions, are historically connoted and situated in space. that’s why we are materialists. historical materialists.
we reject idealism: we don’t believe that culture is the engine of history, for example. we reject all forms of idealism, we reject the “idea” of state (for example), the state for us is a product of the relationships of production . we believe material relationships of production are the engine of history.
that’s a very synthetic answer. but the point is: materialism is not primarily concerned with physical objects or “things.” Instead, it centers on the intricate interplay of historical and spatial contexts in shaping human realities.
Well I don’t believe in spacetime either. I think it’s a mental construct. In the Information age, much of the means of production are explicitly, indisputably made of information. Agreements to buy, sell, and distribute which form the basis of capitalism are social constructs, existing only as products of human thought. Belief in currency, and capital, and wealth, is the driving force of history. That’s part of culture.
I don’t believe in spacetime either. I think it’s a mental construct
Outside of a misunderstanding of materialism, what does this mean? Like, do you not believe that time is a dimension of space? That was the big breakthrough of Einsteins theory of relativity. He proved that gravity only works if time is a dimension of space.
Oh, Einstein’s theory is beautiful. It’s elegant, and there’s a lot of truth to it. It accurately predicts our future perceptions within relativistic situations, far better than Newton’s theory. However, that’s all it is - perception. Einstein accurately described the interface of our minds and created a model we can use to better use that interface. But understanding an interface is not the same as understanding the truth beneath the interface. That’s probably why Einstein’s theory can’t account for quantum science.
interface of our minds
What? It’s not just perception, it’s repeatable measurements. Anyone on earth, even a machine, can run the same experiments (or for astrophysics, observe the same phenomenon) and get the same numbers.
I suppose technically it’s just a model, but if it answers all of our questions it seems to be correct.
That’s probably why Einstein’s theory can’t account for quantum science.
No, that’s because that’s a different problem entirely. Though all models of quantum physics assume that time is a dimension of space as well.
It’s not just perception, it’s repeatable measurements
A repeatable perception of measurements. To think that perceiving something enough times in a row makes it true is a fallacy. Every time I load this here silver disk into my DVD player, I perceive Luke Skywalker lifting a rock with his mind. That doesn’t make my perception true, no matter how repeatable it is.
Anyone on earth, even a machine, can run the same experiments
You mean you can perceive a machine running the same experiments and you will perceive the machine agreeing with your perceptions. That’s hardly an unbiased experiment.
I perceive Luke Skywalker lifting a rock with his mind
No you don’t. You perceive a person standing next to a rock that is lifting upwards. More accurately you perceived photons hitting your sensory neurons that made a pattern that your brain interpreted as a person standing and a rock floating. A narrative told you it was Skywalker picking up a rock with his mind. If the narrative was that the rock was angry and was going to attack Luke, you would interpret that instead.
A repeatable observation does not change no matter the narrative that is assigned to it. I see no other possible explanation for that that besides the observation being the truth, or close enough that any distinction is inconsequential.
A repeatable observation does not change no matter the narrative that is assigned to it. I see no other possible explanation for that that besides the observation being the truth, or close enough that any distinction is inconsequential.
So if I were able to present a narrative which changes my observations of the world’s existence, then you would be wrong to say the world’s existence is true?
If we cannot currently influence this interface, and as of our current perception it is effectively one and the same with reality, why is this at all relevant to Marxist materialism?
It wouldn’t be relevant if we couldn’t influence it, but we can influence it.
Ultimately, though, all the infrastructure to support that exists in the material world. You cannot have a modern information age economy without the material basis of mines to dig up the raw material for those computers, factories to assemble those computers, and power to run those computers.
yes, all of this is the product of labour. and HOW it has been produced matters.
Right, but the mines, factories, and power are just a symbol created by the human brain to abstract away reality from our perceptions.
symbol created by the human brain to abstract away reality from our perceptions.
what do you mean by 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
Together, MUI theory and Conscious Realism form the foundation for an overall theory that the physical world is not objective but is an epiphenomenon (secondary phenomenon) caused by consciousness. Hoffman has said that some form of reality may exist, but may be completely different from the reality our brains model and perceive.[9] Reality may not be made of space-time and physical objects.[3] Through supposing that consciousness is fundamental, Hoffman provides a possible solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which wrestles with the notion of why we seem to have conscious immediate experiences, and how sentient beings could arise from seemingly non-sentient matter. Hoffman argues that consciousness is more fundamental than the objects and patterns perceived by consciousness.[10][better source needed] We have conscious experiences because consciousness is posited as a fundamental aspect of reality. The problem of how sentient beings arise from seemingly non-sentient matter is also addressed because it alters the notion of non-sentient matter. Perceptions of non-sentient matter are mere byproducts of consciousness and don’t necessarily reflect reality. This means the causal notion of non-sentient matter developing into sentient beings is open to question.
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.
You can call them what you want, but you won’t have an information economy without them.
Oh yes, I believe in taking the rules of my perceptual interface very seriously. If people believe in mines, then I get to work on computers. See, that’s culture creating labour relations. That’s what I’m talking about with idealistic communism.
Taking the rules of your perceptual interface seriously is literally just Marxist materialism
The idealist perspective (which it opposes) would suggest that merely the ideas of mines (as in, the simplistic, vague abstractions we make when imagining things, not the perceptual interface idea of mines), is important.
The Marxist materialist, and by extension, the someone who took their perceptual interface seriously, would instead contend that the information (the imaginary mine in our heads) is not as important as the abstraction either our brain made for us or the real physical mine that exists (depending on what you believe). In the case of the non-realist, I;E, the one who suggested the mine is not “real” but is a useful abstraction made by our brains, it would still be more important than our even more unreal imaginary conception of a mine, because the former is an abstraction of a an actually real real thing, albeit one we can’t comprehend, and until/if we’re able to figure out what the mine represents in our perceptual interface, it is literally the most important iteration of the Mine that exists
Well, I think the mine only has miners because people believe it’s a mine, and I think the products of the mine only have value because people believe they’re useful.
yes, we believe capital is relational ofc, and historical situated. there is nothing natural or normal about it. it’s a phase, a period, an arrangement. But culture is a product of the relationships of production, that’s our epistemology. Humans do stuff, how “we create” our world (so, our labor) is what really matters. I hope it’s clear now.
We create the world by thinking about it. Mothers, teachers, priests, musicians, historians, scientists, analysts, artists, philosophers, and programmers are all workers, they all perform labour, and they all spend all day doing nothing but shaping human thought (except for mothers, who also have to raise the children). They spend all day producing culture.
all fine, you might be more Weberian than Marxist. Try to read about Max Weber. But he wasn’t a communist. at all.
Well if he’s not a communist then I’m not going to agree with him. Ownership of the means of production by the workers is essential to a fair society, as is the abolition of class, currency, and the state. Wealth must be distributed from each according to ability to each according to need.
Our perception of reality definitely shapes how it influences us
However, I do not think that we can individually define our perception of reality. External forces constantly incentivize and disincentivize our ways of thinking and our actions and behaviors. Whether those external forces take the literal form of what we perceive them to be or have some sort of underlying truth we cannot properly perceive nor comprehend is irrelevant to this.
I think it’s a matter of scope you’re not considering. Mechanical materialism is what you are referring to when you are creating a division between mechanical substance and metaphysical substance. Marx draws on Hegel who draws on Spinoza who says that mechanical substance and metaphysical substance are composed of the same thing, while understanding that metaphysical substance is self generative and not determined by mechanical substance in and of itself.
Marx’s dialectical materialism is a unity of social reality meaning it’s an understanding that there is both a true form of existence in the material world with complex social concepts existing as a part of that reality. The point of this epistemology is that it helps us understand where truth comes from (that is beyond metaphysical symbolic truth), which is a useful tool in actually changing the world.
Sure there are mystic truths beyond the scope of Marxism, but they are functionally useless in changing the world which is the primary goal of Marxism.
Are you saying that property dualism is compatible with Marx’s materialism?
Sure there are mystic truths beyond the scope of Marxism, but they are functionally useless in changing the world which is the primary goal of Marxism.
Oh, now this seems like a concrete claim we can test. So, would propaganda fall within one of these mystic truths or within Marxian materialism?
Marxian materialism. It is not property dualism because in my view Marx agrees with Hegel that property dualism subjects the metaphysical to be subordinate to the physical. Propaganda is a metaphysical notion informed by physical observations but those also physical observations get their character from the notion. It’s a bit ridiculous to assume propaganda, which is defined by its capability to propagate ideology, is a purely physical thing and would involve a ridiculous amount of loopholes to explain within a mechanical materialist worldview. Marxian materialism doesn’t hold a primacy of one or the other but doesn’t claim an agnosticism to the difference, rather there is a very specific dialectic between the two.
“It is dualist because it is monist. Marx’s ontological monism consisted in affirming the irreducibility of Being to thought, and, at the same time, in reintegrating thoughts with the real as a particular form of human activity.” Sartre, Critique of Dialectic Reason
Philosophy is not exactly my strong point but I think you might get a kick at least out of Critique of Dialectic Reason if you are trying to triangulate how you feel about Marxian materialism. As you are now, you are completely denying the character of the real as possible to be understood at all and reducing it to a matrix of symbols completely detached from the real at all, which doesn’t incorporate that while the symbolic and social reality is the lens with which our minds functions to make “sense” of the real there still exists a real that informs those symbols at the same time.
Or in other words how can you possibly hope to change anything when you can only ever know nothing.
Or in other words how can you possibly hope to change anything when you can only ever know nothing.
There’s an old saying from chaos magic, and maybe you’ve heard it in Assassin’s Creed as the philosophy of the Assassins too: “nothing is true. everything is permitted.”
If I believe in nothing, then I can choose to believe in anything. I find unrealism to be revolutionary.
I think that is a great basis for revolutionizing our ideas, and in many many ways I adhere to that same ethos. I think it needs to be dialectically balanced however with the need to enact real social change on a society wide scale, where things are true given certain assumptions. While the assumptions may be problematic in certain contexts, the outcomes are undeniably real and that is the strength of Marxism. We can deny the symbolic as “truth” but we can’t deny the real no matter how we try.
Why not a simple relativist answer to the problem?
“I want to have a revolution because capitalism causes me to perceive myself and others as suffering. I have a subjective distaste for suffering and choose to impose my personal views upon the world by supporting communism. I will use the scientific method to determine which actions of mine reduce perceived suffering, and then I will do those actions.”
I think you’re talking about an entirely different dimension of discussion than idealism Vs materialism. We are materialists, not realists, and the realism vs non-real debate is not one that classical materialism OR idealism is even remotely equipped for.
Edit: they don’t mean literal space-time is the only factor, they’re saying that human behavior is defined by whatever IS real. Whether that is exactly what we perceive or not is irrelevant to Marxist materialism being correct.
And I say that human behaviour is not defined by whatever may be real, it’s only defined by human perception, which does not align with whatever may be real if anything is.
That is fundamentally impossible. It would imply you could conceive of things you’ve never seen before, but a baby which was blind their entire life would have no idea what people look like or even conceive of what sight in general looks like.
According to conventional neuroscience, the brain is somehow capable of transforming 130 million binary nervous system signals into the sensation of sight, without having been taught to do so. Likewise, the interface theory of perception holds that the mind is capable of transforming whatever does exist into the perceptual interface we see today.
It was taught to do so. Our brain neurons were formed into specific patterns. That was the teaching.
If genes can configure a brain to produce sensations in the absence of stimuli, what is hard to believe about conscious realism?
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Yeah, I think it’s made up
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I have a suspicion there’s a language barrier here so let me ask some questions that should hopefully help me understand
OP, if all humans on earth died, every single one of them, and then, somehow, a human being was born, would they be able to see all the things human beings had built? I’m not asking if they would see them the same way, just if they could perceive them in general
I think the answer to that question is unknowable at our current level of scientific development. There is an argument to be made from Occam’s razor that the answer is “no”, because that’s the simplest explanation for the available data. Likewise, the “no” answer does afford us the greatest revolutionary potential. Believing it is beneficial to human welfare. On the other hand, Donalf Hoffman proposes a theory I find intriguing, called conscious realism, which says the answer is “yes”. I would be willing to entertain the idea that the answer is “yes” for purposes of smoother communication with people who aren’t quite ready for the level of revolutionary potential I propose.
You mentioned David D. Hoffman, but I don’t think he would support what you’re saying here. He seemed to propose that we had an inaccurate view of reality, not that a reality did not exist, or that things would disappear when we died.
I think you read my comment the wrong way around. I said Donald Hoffman proposes the answer is “yes”, as in “yes, the last human would see the works of humanity”.
Hoffman’s theory of conscious realism is summarised on Wikipedia like this:
Conscious Realism is described as a non-physicalist monism which holds that consciousness is the primary reality and the physical world emerges from that. The objective world consists of conscious agents and their experiences. “What exists in the objective world, independent of my perceptions, is a world of conscious agents, not a world of unconscious particles and fields. Those particles and fields are icons in the MUIs of conscious agents but are not themselves fundamental denizens of the objective world. Consciousness is fundamental.”[8][3]
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