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?
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.
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.
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.
