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?
“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.
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.
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?
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.
