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?
Sorry you’re getting bad answers. There is actually a real answer to this.
The first part I think most people got right: you are using a different definition of materialism than Marx did.
What Marx means when he says materialism is where everyone is failing you. For example, Marx and Engels disagreed on Engels project to demonstrate that the physical world operates dialectically. Marx was very clear on his position: the metaphysical expression of that which is material is immaterial.
And here we have a glimpse of the meaning of materialism.
Material here is not a noun. It’s an adjective. That which is material TO SOCIETY stands in opposition to that which is immaterial (not material) TO SOCIETY. Not “is it matter?” but “does it matter?”
Society exists in the real world. Human society is also socially constructed in the minds of persons. What is in the minds of persons is material to society, even if that which is in the minds of people refers to things that are immaterial.
How is this possible? It is possible when we use this definition of materiality:
That which is material is that which is causally linked.
That’s it. Cause and effect are the easiest way to understand materiality. What is immaterial? Objective morality is immaterial. Whether something is objectively good or objectively evil has zero causal impact on the world (except mentally, but I will get to that). Whether morality is objectively real or not is also immaterial, again because of a lack of casual connection to anything. Platonic forms, also completely acausal.
So whether the expression of that causality is through substance or not is immaterial, in so far as the metaphysics has no bearing on causal relationships. If it turns out that matter is not real, as you say, we must still contend with cause-effect relationships. If your chosen metaphysics is closer to real reality than contemporary mainstream understandings, it will be judged so because it offers better explanatory power for society to bring about changes to conditions. The correct answer to what is reality is always material to society if it offers society causal mechanisms for effective change.
So what about beliefs? Persons act. That much is true. Those acts we call behaviors. Those behaviors are causally linked. They cause things to change. But what are behaviors caused by? Beliefs. Your behaviors are caused by your beliefs. And what causes your beliefs? Your experiences. Experiences cause beliefs, beliefs cause behaviors, behaviors cause changes in the world. That causes experiences? Changes in the world. So when someone behaves near you, you sense those behaviors and the changes those behaviors cause and you experience something and it causes changes to your beliefs.
Why does this matter? Well, if you believe in objective morality, your behavior will be different than if you did not. If you believe one thing to be good and another to be evil, those beliefs will impact your behavior. If those beliefs change, your behaviors will change. Therefore, what you believe is material to your behaviors, and your behaviors are material to society. Therefore, if we want to change society, we have to change it via behaviors and if the behaviors we observe are not the behaviors that will lead to the desired change then it becomes imperative to change beliefs. Knowing that beliefs change by experiences and that experiences are responses to change and change occurs through behaviors we can alter our behaviors to generate new experiences that will alter people’s beliefs that will alter their behaviors that will alter society. In this way morality qua beliefs people have about morality is material but metaphysically objective morality is immaterial.
I hope that helps.
Notice that they are replying to others but not you lol.
The issue here isn’t not answering the question correctly, it’s that they don’t know how to put together a coherent question about this in the first place but seem to feel threatened by/dismissive towards materialist critiques. Despite presenting as interested in feedback and learning, they’re spending their efforts replying to disagree wherever they feel comfortable doing so. A faux humility to launder unearned dismissiveness.
The way I am reading your words is not matching the way I am conceptualizing these things, so I will attempt to both clarify and respond to your question and statements.
When I say altering behaviors I mean changing the behaviors of humans. So you go to the diner on the corner every Monday for dinner. That’s a series of behaviors, both the “every Monday” series and the “go to the diner for dinner” aggregate of behaviors. These behaviors are rooted in beliefs. If you were to change your beliefs, your behaviors would change. For example, if you believed the diner was closed permanently your behaviors would change. If you believe the food was causing you intense distress, your behaviors would change. If you believed that making dinner on Mondays was more important to you than eating at the diner, your behavior would change.
So, beliefs have a causal linkage with behaviors. Therefore, if we wish to alter behaviors, we must alter beliefs.
Changing your brain using sheer force of will
Charitably, this would be a cognitive behavior. Uncharitably, this is impossible. You cannot change your physical brain through sheer force of will. However, there is evidence that you can change your physical brain through your behaviors, but your bodily behaviors and your cognitive behaviors. (CBT is an example). But what would cause you to attempt to change your brain through cognitive behaviors? Beliefs. Beliefs cause your behaviors, whether those beliefs are that a bus is hurtling towards you or your belief is that you can earn a profit from buying low and selling high.
I am skeptical of the idea that people can change their fundamental habits without external prompting
Even that external prompting is mediated through sense experience to form beliefs. You can externally prompt someone all you want but unless they can form sense experience, organize that experience, and form beliefs about that experience your prompting will zero causal impact. Ultimately people change themselves in a causal linkage that involves their sense-making apparatus which formulates beliefs from their sensory experience. This is not to say that all we have to do is show people the truth and they will change. It is to say that if you wish to change the behaviors of others you must change the beliefs of others and if they don’t change their beliefs that’s on you for failing to figure out to create the change.
This is what propaganda is. Literally it propagates beliefs into the minds of other persons with the explicit goal of changing their behaviors.
I’ve heard too many stories about morally upstanding people turning out to be total pieces of shit
Generally, this anecdote points to something we have observed pretty consistently - beliefs in the existence of morality are highly correlated with anti-social behavior and atrocities. Empirically we are seeing that the utility of morality is not social good but actually social ill - morality is invented by the ruling class to control the masses behaviors and to indoctrinate new members of the ruling class into the behaviors that maintain the status quo.
As for wanting to do the right thing but fighting an uphill battle to do it, welcome to the struggle. We’re all here trying to figure it out. It turns out the ruling class will never yield without the masses forcing them to. Now the challenge is creating the beliefs in the masses that will result in coordinated effort to bring force against the ruling class, sustain it, and build a new society.
Where can I read more about this? I don’t think I’ve ever read an interpretation like this.
I pieced this together reading Marx, Engels, and secondary sources. It’s interesting to read Marx and Engels arguing about Engels project to frame science dialectically.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/jordan/article2.htm
http://isj.org.uk/dialectics-nature-and-the-dialectics-of-nature/
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/189339531.pdf
Dialectics of Nature
Anti-Duhring
I can’t seem to find the correspondence between Marx and Engels where Marx claims that the physical manifestation of phenomena is irrelevant to the task at hand, that only the relationships and processes matter and whether the underlying reality is one way or another doesn’t change anything. If it did, it would merely be incorporated immediately because it has causal linkage, but it would then immediately come under question of what “really” is happening behind the metaphysical curtain.
Materialism in this sense is not the circular reasoning of the material reductionism. It is inclusionary not exclusionary. And it does not attempt to explain fundamental metaphysical reality but to explain how things relate to each other in dialectical processes so as to find how we relate to those processes and can then change them.
Thanks! I knew about the secret debate in Marxism about reality being dialectical itself but I didn’t know Marx disagreed with Engels about it…
