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Free will is a human's subjective experience making choices.
Determinism is describing that the more information about a system, the more the result can be predicted accurately. With perfect knowledge, one gets perfect predictions. (nobody will get perfect knowledge)
Both of these statements can be true without negating each others premise.
But why do people think there is some sort of contradiction?
Perhaps we should look at this dialecticaly.
A human body has desires and needs to sustain itself and also will do behavior to produce happy chemicals for the brain. The brain creates a model of reality based on its experiences in order to optimize the best experiences. People can calculate less optimal choices because of the incompleteness of their mental models of the universe. There will always be a contradiction between any brain's model of the universe and the actual universe. A mental model can be reinforced to make that mental model give feel good hormones to the body. When the universe demonstrates to the mental model that it is false in some manner it gives bad feeling hormones.
Most conservatives in KKKrackerland I have met seem to insist on free will because of the central point of their model is that the world that benefits them and they want to feel that they made the right choices. They tie their sense of self to their nation. When evidence presents itself that the nation is less than good they cling to the ambiguity to justify their "truth" about the goodness of the nation. Those that suffer are merely making choices that are wrong. If the impoverished and criminalized made the right choice, they wouldn't be poor or criminal. When they do criminal acts to hurt others, sometimes it is for the joy of hurting others. Other times it is because they know that they can get away with it and indifferent to the suffering of those they hurt.
Most liberals I have met cling to the model of determinism because they get pleasure from being correct more than identifying with victory. Some liberals of persecuted minority groups often identify with that failure and develop a sense of learned helplessness. If one does not believe in choice, one can not see themselves improving themselves or the world. When they do crimes its often because they lack the imagination to meet their needs in a legal manner.
As a communist I want to improve myself to give myself the power to help others, and in return, I need to have faith that those others will help me improve this wretched capitalist hellscape. I'm a highly empathetic person and I see the needs of all as my own needs. My research seems to indicate that socialism is the optimal means to stop others from harming me and harming themselves, for that reason I support socialism. I don't need to have 100 percent knowledge to choose socialism in a deterministic material world.
But why do people think there is some sort of contradiction?
There are different definitions of "free will", but the common one is purely idealist in a sense that our thoughts aren't guided by our material conditions. It's also often a religious position that god gave humans a soul and therefore only we have "free will". If you drill down to the fundamentals of that position you reach a position that says our thoughts don't (need to) obey the laws of physics and similar universal laws. It's a position of idealist dualism that states our "mind" is not material and is separated from the material reality we exist in. It very often follows that material reality itself doesn't really exist, except in our "mind" and then you reach a purely solipsistic position. That's why there is a contradiction. If the definition you're using for "free will" is basically just our material will, our thoughts, then the contradiction disappears, but I wouldn't call that "free will", as it will cause more confusion due to the definitions.
Here's Lenin from 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism':
The materialist elimination of the “dualism of mind and body” (i.e., materialist monism) consists in the assertion that the mind does not exist independently of the body, that mind is secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the external world. The idealist elimination of the “dualism of mind and body” (i.e., idealist monism) consists in the assertion that mind is not a function of the body, that, consequently, mind is primary, that the “environment” and the “self” exist only in an inseparable connection of one and the same “complexes of elements.” Apart from these two diametrically opposed methods of eliminating “the dualism of mind and body,” there can be no third method, unless it be eclecticism, which is a senseless jumble of materialism and idealism.
Note that the "complexes of elements" used here basically mean our sensations of reality, but it's a confusing term introduced by empirio-criticists to "smuggle in" idealism into materialist philosophy which is what Lenin is critiquing.
This. It is also worth noting on that excerpt that there is certainly contradiction there. The thing is, it’s not an intractable contradiction and it doesn’t make our Marxist minds explode. Liberals see a contradiction and think “that can’t exist then, there must be a correct non-contradictory answer.” Only with a dialectical mode of reference does one become at ease with contradictions.
You are correct that there are still contradictions. What I meant was that the intractable contradictions specific to idealist thought disappear when we fully embrace materialist dialectics. Like you said, we can easily deal with contradictions, but liberals can't.
I am in complete agreement. It’s just annoying how the colloquial use of free will implies that choices are made at some level beyond restraint, whereas it’s in fact a part of the functioning of a material brain. Thanks for the effort post.