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I have to say, it feels like one issue that I have with a lot of socialists is not understanding what idealism is and not understanding when they are talking about non-material things (and there are a lot of important non-material things to talk about, like capitalism, value, social stuff in general, etc.). I am honestly still unsure why so many people assume that idealism is incompatible with major schools of thought associated with socialism.
I am still not super clear on it myself, but while you are correct that idealism isn't incompatible with socialism, it is incompatible with Marxism as idealism is the opposite of materialism and Marxism is rooted in materialism, not idealism.
And I think you are wrong on how you categorize things. Capitalism, value, and social stuff can be analyzed from an idealist perspective, but a Marxist would analyze those things from a materialist perspective. They don't merely exist as ideas, but also as real material institutions that have material affects on people.
thank you, you are completely correct. more marxists need to understand that idealism is the opposite of materialism.
it is incompatible with Marxism as idealism is the opposite of materialism and Marxism is rooted in materialism, not idealism
I have to disagree. Marxism does not seem to be rooted in either materialism or idealism, or, at least, I do not see any contradictions with either. A lot of people seem to hold this view out of gross misunderstanding of what idealism and materialism (as well as the relevant types of those, such as, for example, ontological idealism and materialism) are, and an assumption that idealism is some sort of a belief in magic.
Like, one of the schools of thought that I subscribe to is mathematical Platonism (perhaps with some modifications, as I have not seen any mention of concepts such as what I describe as 'manifestations of ideas' in sources regarding mathematical Platonism), which makes me an idealist in the ontological sense. In what ways are those views of mine incompatible with Marxism? I see no conflicts of any sort of significance whatsoever. I do not think that Marxism has any sort of dependency on ontology, or, at least, I do not see those dependencies.
Capitalism, value, and social stuff can be analyzed from an idealist perspective, but a Marxist would analyze those things from a materialist perspective
If we are talking about strict materialism, then such perspectives would posit that non-material things do not exist, and I am yet to find a Marxist who holds those views.
If we are talking about non-strict materialism, where non-material things can be said to exist, then how do those perspectives differ from idealist ones in this context? I do not see any dependencies of, say, Marx talking about various forms of values of commodities on making non-strict materialist assumptions.They don't merely exist as ideas, but also as real material institutions that have material affects on people
However, that is not in conflict with idealism, and, furthermore, when relevant things are discussed in socialist spaces, including Marxist and Marxist-adjacent ones, people almost always talk about the non-material stuff. Not to the exclusion of material things, of course, like people getting sick, or some goods or materials being moved to somewhere, etc., but people also talk about and in terms of stuff like capitalists and workers' relations to capital, land, and labour, like laws being passed, enforced, and abolished, like policies of various states and organisations, etc.
And, of course, I am yet to encounter any sort of Marxist perspective where materialist assumptions are necessary, unless I am missing something.I have to disagree. Marxism does not seem to be rooted in either materialism or idealism, or, at least, I do not see any contradictions with either.
Marxism is dialectical materialism, that is what it means. When someone says "Marxist analysis", it means it's an analysis through the lens of dialectical materialism. It's method is dialectical, viewing things as a process, while it's theory is materialistic, matter being primary. Marxism is hitherto the most advanced development on materialist theory.
Obligatory "Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Stalin" recommendation, this book explains why Marxism is opposite to idealism and metaphysics: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
Marxism is dialectical materialism, that is what it means. When someone says "Marxist analysis", it means it's an analysis through the lens of dialectical materialism. It's method is dialectical, viewing things as a process, while it's theory is materialistic, matter being primary. Marxism is hitherto the most advanced development on materialist theory
But what actual contradictions are there between Marxism and idealism?
Again, for example, I am a mathematical Platonist. What beliefs of mine in that regard contradict with Marxism? If it's just the subscription to ontological materialism, but without any notable conclusions drawn from that, then, given that that would mean that I agree with every Marxist position except that one, that would mean that the differences between my positions and Marxist ones are insignificant.Obligatory "Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Stalin" recommendation, this book explains why Marxism is opposite to idealism and metaphysics: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm
I will read it, albeit that will have to wait until at least tomorrow.
Again, for example, I am a mathematical Platonist. What beliefs of mine in that regard contradict with Marxism?
Well for one you see math as something independent, you see math existing in a vacuum.
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things, phenomena are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.
The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena, inasmuch as any phenomenon in any realm of nature may become meaningless to us if it is not considered in connection with the surrounding conditions, but divorced from them; and that, vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by surrounding phenomena." (Dialectical and Historical Materialism)
This is my understanding of your views from what you wrote in other replies, i haven't read and don't plan to read about mathematical Platonism, we already have developed much further than whatever Plato worked with.
Marxism does not seem to be rooted in either materialism or idealism
Marx was a young hegelian. Hegel was an idealist. Marxism was created by Marx changing Hegel's ideas. Dialectical materialism took Hegel's dialectic and changed it from idealist to materialist.
Can you, however, point to any Marxist positions that are in contradiction to idealism in general and/or, in my case specifically, to mathematical Platonism? As of right now, I see literally no conflict between Marxism and idealism.
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.
This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists.
Karl Marx - The German Ideology
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htmMy understanding of this passage is that in idealist thinking, ideas shape reality but in materialist thinking, material reality shapes ideas.
I will not be able to go through the entire quote right now, so I will do so later. For now, I'd like to address the last part of your reply with my reply to another comment in this thread:
That seems to be a roughly correct assessment of what idealism is if we replace the word 'reality' with 'material part of reality' (because non-material part of reality is still a part of reality). However, I see a couple of issues with the assessment of Marxism as supposedly being a materialist and anti-idealist school of thought:
- I'm not sure what the argument is for how the ideas encountered in math depend on material part of reality. There is no such dependency as far as I can see as a person with a background in mathematics.
- I am not aware of any Marxist positions that are in conflict with idealism. If there are such positions, I'm all ears.
Note that the middle part of this reply is just hastily copied from elsewhere. I did not edit it in case there are some relevant positions covered in the quote.
Idealism is when you have ideas and the more you have the more idealist it is. And if you have really high level important ideas then it’s Platonism
PS it’s bad form to not read someone’s reference and proceed to “reply” with a canned response. If you don’t have the time to respond say so and use that comment as a reminder for when you do have time.
I will actually address your points when I get back from a doc appt
Edit: this looks like something I'll want to make into a separate effort post. Will tag you when it's done.
Please tag me too!
PS it’s bad form to not read someone’s reference and proceed to “reply” with a canned response
I did not have the time to consider the entirety of the reply, and I felt that there was a part that should have been clarified. Considering that I already had an answer that I could have used for that purpose at the time, and was lacking time to properly write a full response, I judged that option as appropriate.
Will be waiting for the promised post. Do consider that it might take me some time to go over it, as I will both be getting busier starting tomorrow and I am experiencing some stress discussing this, in particular because people might think as if I'm just trying to argue for arguing's sake in this case or that I am trying to be rude.
So, I finished going over the quoted part, and Marx is talking about specifically the type(s) of idealism that I do not subscribe to. He is addressing specifically the types of idealism that posit that only material stuff and mental stuff exist, and that the latter has some sort of 'primacy' over the former. My view on this sort of idealism is echoed by what you quoted, and I find that type of idealism rather silly.
The quoted part does not address the type of idealism that I subscribe to, one which posits that non-material non-mental stuff, like what mathematicians study, exists as well, and that some of it has no dependency on the other stuff, i.e. it has 'primacy' over, in particular, material stuff in this sense.
Look into historical materialism. Marx's materialist method of understanding how human societies evolved hinged on giving primacy to factors like energy, production, population and ecology. It allowed him to construct an understanding of anthropology so advanced for his time that when I was being taught anthropology by my uni professors I legit thought he was a Marxist. Only later did I realise that marx's method is today being rediscovered and being touted as some new revolutionary thinking.
Another point in which materialism is important to Marxism is with economics. Whole today's economic theories on value consider it to be subjective, marx analysed value through constraints on labour in an economy. The method that he used was a kind of primitive linear programming. It then inspired the creation of actual linear programming, which won Nobel prizes and forms the backbone of economic planning even in capitalist firms.
Really, marx's dialectical materialism was one of the first scientific approaches to fields and political movements (economics, history, socialism) dominated by idealism and hodgepodge theories. It is the reason why marx was so influential beyond his years and beyond his contemporaries like proudhon and fruerbach
I am aware of historical materialism. I am not aware of any conflicts between it and idealism.
Marx himself seems to have only thought of idealism as specifically the type of idealism that posits that only material stuff and mental stuff exist. I do not subscribe to any of those schools of idealist thought, and I very much do subscribe to the notion that mental stuff is dependent on material stuff, and, in that sense, the latter has a 'primacy' over the former. And yet, I am still an idealist and I see no conflicts between idealism and Marxism.
I don't remember if you were the guy who mentioned believing in platonic ideals in math or what (platonic ideals come deeply into conflict with dialectics), but it seems as if your philosophical views are highly eclectic. Maybe you should study some authors who explain dialectical materialism.
I mean, mathematical Platonism seems to be the most popular view on ontology among mathematicians, so my views are not exactly special in that regard.
However, I have not shared these thoughts on Hexbear before, at least as far as I can remember. Also, please, don't call me a 'guy'. I am not hard-against that, but would rather not be called that word or described as such.
Ok, sorry about calling you a guy.
Mathematical platonism is rejected in the dialectical world-view. In fact, dialectics is entirely incompatible with platonism. Dialectics by definition sees all objects are having fuzzy boundaries that change over time. In dialectics, the definition of objects is context dependent and negotiable.
Marxism is strictly materialist. Read Materialism and Empiriocriticism or Anti-Dühring.
Marxism is strictly materialist
Does Marxism draw any conclusions from materialism that are relevant to stuff like society, economics, politics, communist praxis, epistemology or some human activity that I have failed to consider here? If not, then I do feel justified in saying that there are no relevant conflicts and calling myself a Marxist.
Read Materialism and Empiriocriticism or Anti-Dühring
Alright. Albeit that will not be done overnight.
However, do understand that if by 'idealism' those works mean specifically the idealist schools of thought that only recognise material and non-material mental stuff, and not idealist schools of thought in general, then the views that I subscribe to are likely not addressed in those works.
Does Marxism draw any [relevant] conclusions from materialism?
Of course. One of the tenets of Marxism is that social being determines social consciousness, not vice versa. This is textbook materialism. Anything else simply leads to liberalism, religion, etc.
the idealist schools of thought that only recognise material and non-material mental stuff
You seem confused. There are two main currents in philosophy - materialism, which posits that nature is primary to spirit, being is primary to thought, and idealism, which posits the opposite. In between the two there are agnostics, who claim this question is impossible to answer. This has nothing to do with whether a philosophy "recognizes non-material stuff".
None of those things you mentioned are non material. They’re just patterns that exist in the material configuration of physical matter. For example, a stack of wood is only different from a wooden chair because of how that wood is arranged. That’s a material change even though the underlying substance is identical. Value is just a way of describing changes in configuration in the material world that are found to be useful to humans. Social relations are also more complicated but still exist in material form as they are embedded in the complex arrangements of neurons and chemicals within the human brain.
The problem then with idealism is that if you don’t understand how concepts like capitalism are embedded in the physical world, you are very unlikely to understand how to change them.
None of those things you mentioned are non material
None of those things consist of any matter. They are not material things. They have connections to material stuff, but they are not themselves such.
Furthermore, when discussing, for example, social relations, people very rarely talk about the material stuff, and, indeed, we usually do not have much of an idea of the configurations of the brains of relevant people, or about other relevant material stuff. That does not impede us from, well, discussing those.The problem then with idealism is that if you don’t understand how concepts like capitalism are embedded in the physical world, you are very unlikely to understand how to change them
Understanding connections between capitalism-as-an-idea and material stuff, including what I would describe as manifestations of capitalism, creates no conflict with idealism, though.
If you don’t think the configuration of material objects in relation to one another is a material phenomenon then I have no idea what is.
As for when people talk about social relations people they are talking about materials things! It’s just when you have highly complex repeating and interrelated patterns in the way in which matter is arranged it’s easier to think only about the relevant information.
To go back to my chair example. Quarks and leptons and other subatomic particles are interacting to create atoms which are structured into highly complex molecules which form the basis of a cells which were assembled into what was once part of a large organism. That organism was split into pieces and reassembled into an object you can sit on. A simple chair is so complex in fact that we can’t even conceive of all the specific information embedded within any given chair. That does not mean the idea of a chair is meaningless. It just means our minds have produced a highly simplified reflection of what a chair is in order to direct the way our material bodies interact with it.
Capitalism is the same way. It is manifest in the material world. It is a consequence of the ways in which matter interacts. The concept of capitalism as it exists in our heads is just a highly simplified material reflection of the material phenomenon itself.
This is such a critical point in Marxism. It’s why dialectical materialism is not a positivist phenomenon. We can never truly know everything about a material object as long as the information embedded within said object is more complex than our brains can mirror. If that’s true then as the world changes our ideas must change with it and indeed they do! That’s the dialectical process in action.
value and other social things ARE material, but they are not PHYSICAL