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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
