Free will is a metaphysical question that science cannot address. It can rule out some false claims about it, like some historical religious claims, but not the basic metaphysical question. Over time science will only build more and more specific explanations that show minds to be contingent on biological, chemical, physical, mechanisms and a relatively straightforward framework of causal reality. It will seem to narrow down the possibility for free will because it makes the space occupied by a ghost in the machine smaller and more fringe, but this is drawing too much from the religious tradition of blurring metaphysical and scientifically investigable questions - it will address only those hypotheses that confuse the two the same way it addresses the falsehood of all animals being created in their current forms all at once.
The kind of thinking you’re referring to is called vulgar materialism by Marxists and Marx and Engels specifically criticized it; it’s incompatible with the basic Marxist framing of political organization. Lenin famously derogatorily referenced the quote, “the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile” and spent a lot of time crapping on it.
Vulgar materialism lends a helping hand to the ruling class as it gives a definitive answer to the question of whether you “should” decide to politically organize and foment revolution: “no and your question is invalid because you can’t choose to do anything”. Dialectical materialism is a direct response to both an idealistic dialectic (Hegel) and vulgar materialists (positivist-inclined liberals).
Humans have no issue with identifying cause and effect in everything but their own heads. To believe we are immune or that it is “unknown” is akin to believing in the soul imo. We aren’t special. Just another part of the universe.
Being part of the universe doesn’t change the metaphysical question, it just rejects a historical religious framing of it. Souls, a ghost in the machine, etc. Most people believe in the latter and have for a very long time, so it’s understandable that this is the usual object of the critique, but it doesn’t exhaust the question.
I’m just pointing out various inconsistencies and errors in thought. Whether I have a personal position that is super smart or the worst thing you’ve ever heard wouldn’t change the fact that these analyses or claims have the faults I’ve pointed out.
So you’re debating 19th century German philosophers on behalf of a 19th century german philosopher. All I mean by determinism is that free will doesn’t exist.
Marx is a 19th century German philosopher, though his philosophy was dead-set on building a framework for overthrowing capitalism. Diamat is weird German philosophy, it’s about 80% of why it’s so hard to understand in the first place.
So, philosophy nerds tend to separate determinism from free will for the purpose of asking whether they are compatible. When I see people saying free will doesn’t exist, that determinism is instead what’s up, and that science is saying things about the matter, I interpret you’re an incompatibilist that believes in a materialist determinism and an absence of free will. I see other folks in the comments making similar statements, including fatalistic ones.
The vulgar materialism criticized by Marx, Lenin, etc is a passive one that will happily include social relations in its purview. It is primarily called vulgar in contrast to being dialectical. Where Marx, Lenin, etc see a capacity to drive revolution through class consciousness and revolutionary consciousness, emphasizing that this is a necessary piece of revolution that interplays with material conditions, their predecessors (and contemporaries, and subsequent critics) would more often stand back and say that the events unfolded due to, simply, the material conditions.
Here’s a Lenin quote among many: “The new Iskra-ist method of expressing its views reminds one of Marx’s opinion (in his famous) of the old materialism, which was alien to the ideas of dialectics. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, said Marx, the point, however, is to change it”
Lenin’s analysis is simple, possibly even simplistic compared to what he was referencing, but he played a big part in defining what the term means.
emphasizing that this is a necessary piece of revolution that interplays with material conditions, their predecessors (and contemporaries, and subsequent critics) would more often stand back and say that the events unfolded due to, simply, the material conditions.
Here we are, this is the quote that reveals the argument.
WE ARE NOT SAYING THERE IS A DETERMINED SET OF EVENTS THAT ARE DESIGNED TO PLAY OUT- our decisions, our goals, our beliefs ALL MATTER. We MAKE OUR OWN HISTORY and decide what WE DO AND WHAT WE SAY.
BUT.
THE THINGS PROVIDED TO US are, to an extent, out of our control- Eventually, we will find a variable we cannot directly influence, and eventually those variables reach beyond our “sphere of control” and those variables outside of our control as individuals still affect us (consider systemic discrimination, telling a random individual to simply act as if it does not exist is absurd, and the supernatural “free will” position basically asks everyone to do that about everything, but working together we can change a lot, and not in an unrealistic or absurd way involving anime power ups and screaming)
We can change the power we have and gain the ability to influence more things, even topple systems, but this does not happen in a vacuum- We gain the ability to do so because we gain the thought to do so because we observe reality or read a book or think about something- We do not spontaneously gain urges and desires from supernatural inspiration (probably).
So, I don’t really consider myself a determinist, because determinism implies a one true path everything follows that’s set out for us. I just think the original conception of “free will”- the very specific idea that every individual is some sort of anime-level entity capable of determining everything about their life through sheer willpower, which is used to justify hating the poor, the unhealthy, or the infirm- is complete bourgoisie bullshit.
I offered a framing like that - that choice exists constrained by material conditions (historically contingent, etc) - and OP rejected it and started talking about 2 or 3 other things. You may want to reconsider who the “we” is referring to and if you really agree with each other. As a reminder, they also said free will was disproven by science lol.
I think several folks here are just starting to learn about these things and are making mistakes. That’s not a problem in itself unless there’s a resistance to seeking understanding, of adopting defensive behavior rather than accepting and contending with criticism, etc. Then it becomes difficult to share understanding and mutually arrive at correct thinking.
If you read what I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, you’ll find several quotations, references, and reframings that all say the same basic thing about the nature of choice, will, etc in diamat as characterized by Marx and Marxists. A lot of it overlaps with what you’re saying, but none of it seemed to resonate with any of those rm disagreeing with me. What do you think that says about the positions here and the nature of the disagreement?
PS this statement is… not correct: “I just think the original conception of “free will”- the very specific idea that every individual is some sort of anime-level entity capable of determining everything about their life through sheer willpower, which is used to justify hating the poor, the unhealthy, or the infirm- is complete bourgoisie bullshit.” I doubt anyone knows the first conception but even the old ones were more sophisticated than this. Even the organized religious ones were. And they all predate capitalism and the bourgeois class.
Bourgoisie in that it is used to justify bourgoisie ideology in present day
And I do think people are rejecting your explanations because the conversation just sort of started hostily and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was enough to stop people from trying to reconcile
The old concepts of free will aren’t used to justify bourgeois ideology… bourgeois ideology created new versions and normalized them, leading people to believe it was always so. For example, if you used an etymological definition of original you’d be referring to the one of the Roman Catholic Church whose religious framing is entirely replaced within capitalist ideology.
I can’t imagine what you think is hostile in how the conversation started.
You and EB have a similar compatibilist viewpoint. I am skeptical of compatibilism because I have yet to hear a coherent argument for any sort free will that is not agnostic. I never said it was disproved by science, just that I can find no scientific arguments for it. Maybe I should check out Dennet.
That’s not generally how philosophy works. I’m just pointing out the basis of diamat as framed by Marx et al. You are free to hold whatever position you want, I don’t really care, but holding hard and fast to determinism and no free will is a rejection of diamat.
How? I am no mechanical materialist, I just didn’t realize I need to write an essay on dialectics to show such. Believing in “free” will is a rejection of diamat because it implies an entity beyond material reality with the power to control one’s body.
It’s not hard to find folks here using this as a form of fatalism, including vulgar materialism. It pops up both in the form of saying proletarian revolution and socialism are inevitable and in those who take hard determinism (often without even knowing that’s what it is) to its logical conclusion of the idea of trying to do anything to build revolution being a category error. I would like people to organize, not paralyze themselves with their first foray into philosophy.
I am a dialectical materialist. The material world is a lot more complicated than some determinists make it seem. Just because there are contradictions in everything doesn’t mean determinism is disproven.
One of Marx’s main things was in picking fights with Feuerbach on this exact issue, though, and Dialectical Materialism is strictly incompatible with vulgar materialism.
I’m not saying you can’t personally be a determinist but it is a contradiction to say someone is both diamat and a materialist determinist.
From that reading: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated”
it is a contradiction to say someone is both diamat and a materialist determinist.
Unless “materialist determinist” means something incongruous with the words used to name it here, you’re being silly. The material dialectic is one of matter with matter. There can be no coherent Marxism that isn’t one of compatibilism on the basis that humans are materially reducible but what they can be reduced to is still much more complex than just receptacles of their experiences.
In essence, there are crass materialists who use determinism to try to smuggle absurdly abstracted fatalism in the garb of science (and the lazy meme in the OP comes off as this), but that has nothing to do with a proper materialist assessment.
Unless “materialist determinist” means something incongruous with the words used to name it here, you’re being silly.
???
OP is clearly referring to determinism in a materialist sense and one that leads to a poverty of action. Early on, Marx struggled with this in critiques of Feuerbach et al and eventually settled on a more coherent conceptualization of dialectical materialism that centered social forces. A rigid subscription to determinism and a rejection of free will implies a poverty of action and a resignation. Anyone can feel free to adopt that, just don’t call it compatible with dialectical materialism or Marxist thought more generally.
The material dialectic is one of matter with matter. There can be no coherent Marxism that isn’t one of compatibilism on the basis that humans are materially reducible but what they can be reduced to is still much more complex than just receptacles of their experiences.
OP has rejected free will and appealed to a materialist determinism, citing science. This is not exactly a compatibilist framing lol.
In essence, there are crass materialists who use determinism to try to smuggle absurdly abstracted fatalism in the garb of science (and the lazy meme in the OP comes off as this), but that has nothing to do with a proper materialist assessment.
I would say that vulgar materialism is still proper materialist, it’s just not Marxist.
I’m not invested in the philosophical debate itself because it’s pretty clear basically nobody actually reads 19th century German philosophy, and rarely carefully, and that’s what would be needed to go back and forth on a level deeper than where I’m trying to keep it: “Marx said X” and not “Marx was right because [nerd terms]”. I also don’t think it really matters other than to push back against, as you mention, fatalistic thinking. This tends to paralyze in either extreme: that revolution is inevitable so you can observe the world without dedicating yourself to revolution or that you lack agency and the future is simply out of your hands, good or bad. I’d like to see folks joining and creating orgs and gaining the skills of getting people to engage in collective action.
A rigid subscription to determinism and a rejection of free will implies a poverty of action and a resignation. Anyone can feel free to adopt that, just don’t call it compatible with dialectical materialism or Marxist thought more generally.
There are different kinds of determinism that get called materialist, and my argument hinges on separating them. As an example, there is economic determinism (here is someone arguing Marx is not that), which though metaphysically materialist is idealist in the Marxist sense of relying on abstraction that rejects some aspects of causality in the material world. In The German Ideology, for example, he refers to Hegelians as idealist in this special sense because they considered only, to put it crassly, their intellectual circlejerking over Consciousness and so on as though all of humanity was causally downstream from this when that is plainly not the case. Likewise, though it appears more materialist than whatever the Hegelians were doing, economic determinism is still discounting the causality of non-economic factors in the world and therefore meets this particular definition of idealist. Among these non-economic factors, of course, are things like the person’s own psychology, or those aspects which cannot be credited to their economic position (we can start with their perception of space if it must be proved that such aspects exist).
So what I’m complaining about are determinist framings that claim the idea of materialism while discounting factors that exist within material reality. Whether you choose to act or not is itself a material factor, and the fact that Laplace’s Demon could have predicted it is beside the point. There is no overarching I-Swear-This-Is-Materialist-Guys Destiny that operates independently from your choices, those choices are part of the causal chain as they are both caused and causing. Anyone who uses a phrase like OP of “free will is an illusion” is surely deluding themselves into quietism with a belief in some kind of destiny that is absolutely at odds with sincere materialism. Such people are just renaming Fate to Science and misappropriating scientific anecdotes and rhetoric to clumsily defend this sleight-of-hand.
OP has rejected free will and appealed to a materialist determinism, citing science. This is not exactly a compatibilist framing lol.
OP is being silly, but my point is that a compatibilist framing is one that endorses the idea of free will as an element of a nonetheless-deterministic system, which I think is the only way one can do Marxism coherently. Then again, I suppose this position comes from the fact that I think you need compatibilism to do anything coherently, so this isn’t nearly as focused an argument as I thought it was (and I didn’t think it was very focused to begin with).
I’m not invested in the philosophical debate itself because it’s pretty clear basically nobody actually reads 19th century German philosophy, and rarely carefully,
In my defense, I do read Schopenhauer sometimes, but what you really mean I assume are the more popular authors like the Hegelians and so on. I do make some effort to read Engels carefully, but he has the merit of not being as interested in Hegel as Marx.
It sounds like we have basically the same opinion but just expressed it in ways that lead to miscommunication, lol.
If I were to tweak something to match my approach more closely, it’s that I consider diamat to be closer to a framework of investigation, one epistemology (that I’m a fan of) among several, just like “the” scientific method or the accumulated knowledge of communities that doesn’t fit cleanly into a Eurocentric framing. I don’t really need it to be more than that, so I’m okay with the idea that it also has its limitations. What matters is that we can become more determined and better at building revolution - and diamat definitely helps in one’s thinking about it.
Re: 19th century German philosophers I have regrettably read many. It’s only useful for exactly this topic, which is to say, not very. Wiederholen sie auf Deutsch. Okay it’s also useful for one other thing: I can make toxic Trots and DSA libs shut up sometimes irl.
Fun fact: Freud used plain German words for id, ego, etc. Academics that love to get up their own asses decided to make them Latin in translation.
OP is clearly referring to determinism in a materialist sense and one that leads to a poverty of action.W
Where did I imply this, allow me to quote myself on my previous post.
in recognizing determinism one can resign themselves to the supposed inevitable - that would be stupid, or one could go on living as if they had free will even though it’s probably determined or at least random. Remember that even if it is determined your determined actions still matter. Being convinced whether or not you have free will may be out of your control, but the following actions will still affect the world.
How am I a vulgar materialist? You can’t just say “my idea is in this category, and yours is in that category, therefore you are wrong.” For your quote, where does that contradict my ideas. Yes, things are more complicated than acting like a person is a billiard ball or a pure subject. In dialectical materialism all things are subjects and objects, but where does the choice come in. All you’re saying is things are more complicated than certain determinists make out and I’m not denying that. P.S. Breht from Revolutionary Left Radio is a determinist and he’s as marxist as you can get.
Dialectical Materialism is not a sterile philosophical framework, it’s a cart being driven by the horse of stoking revolutionary action. Marx’s writings were about how to be a revolutionary, why be a revolutionary, what is fundamentally at issue with capitalism that requires revolution, and how can we address revolution via the “right” epistemological framework. Its most basic statement is to reject (1) the (pejorative of) idealism, of placing a framework of understanding in the driver’s seat and conforming material reality to fit within in, and (2) vulgar materialism, which is to say a sterile materialism that says material forces caused X to happen and there ya go, end of story. In rejecting the latter there is a call to action, of recognizing the ability to self-shape and foment revolution through developed class consciousness, through revolutionary class consciousness. One of the reasons Marx spends so much time clarifying proletarians from lumpens and personally pushing to organize and radicalize. Diamat is a philosophy of activism.
Holding hard to this kind of deterministic thinking is a vulgarization that strips the entirety of the activist struggle. You seem to call something diamat if it recognizes mutual shaping of material conditions and society, but if that society and you and your org have no agency then the point is entirely moot. You have merely created a framework of describing a clockwork, not at all what Marx was getting at. The subjectivity addressed, for example, is not just being the subject of an object. As an epistemological endeavor, the whole point of diamat is to use it to explore how to build revolution. What you choose to build, how you advocate, who you fight and argue with, etc.
I’m not surprised that a Western self-labeled Marxist podcaster may be incoherent lol. The thing that characterizes the Western left more than anything is a deep urge to have and share strong opinions, to do insufficient self-criticism, and then call it a day, failing to actually organize anything. But I dunno I don’t follow or really care about that one dude.
I know what Marxism is and I know people affect society. I just don’t know where you think free will comes from. At this point it just seems like you’re mad I used the word “determinism.” I’ll have you know Breht is not a hot takes kind of guy except when he shows his raw emotions around palestine. He is a nuanced dialectician and the podcast where he mentioned determinism wasn’t meant to be widely seen or make anyone mad.
Why do I need to know where free will comes from? This line of pushback makes no sense to me. I do not need to provide a positive alternative for your claims to be contradictory. Contradictory claims are not good and true by default, waiting for a pure and good alternative until they can really properly be contradicted. What would be so bad about saying, “oh I guess this doesn’t make sense” and just… leaving it there and probing deeper later?
The hard line incompatibilist determinism you and others are mentioning is basically what liberals hold up as a straw man to criticize Marx’s strong emphasis on material conditions (including historical contingency on past human action) shaping all the context in which we operate, including the shape of our thoughts. Something something “like a nightmare”.
Re: podcast guy, maybe he’s fine who knows but I cannot recommend, “a podcast guy said it” as a supporting argument for why a philosophical position isn’t contradictory. Cold takes can also be incoherent and this one is about 150 years old.
That doesn’t mean its proven, either. The quantum mechanical world does not appear to fit our deterministic models. It suggests those models are only approximations of reality, that they only have a useful predictive capacity within a cosmically narrow set of conditions.
it’s unknown, the bit of the map that says “here be dragons”. Maybe there is some quantum component to the phenomenon we’re calling free will. Maybe it’s just a hallucination of meat. To say one or the other definitively isn’t happening, that it does not exist, would be a crude misrepresentation of the research.
Dialectical materialism holds that both are at work but that material conditions are dominant. As a response to idealism, it’s not simply materialism.
How can free will possibly exist though? There are no science compatible arguments for it.
Free will is a metaphysical question that science cannot address. It can rule out some false claims about it, like some historical religious claims, but not the basic metaphysical question. Over time science will only build more and more specific explanations that show minds to be contingent on biological, chemical, physical, mechanisms and a relatively straightforward framework of causal reality. It will seem to narrow down the possibility for free will because it makes the space occupied by a ghost in the machine smaller and more fringe, but this is drawing too much from the religious tradition of blurring metaphysical and scientifically investigable questions - it will address only those hypotheses that confuse the two the same way it addresses the falsehood of all animals being created in their current forms all at once.
The kind of thinking you’re referring to is called vulgar materialism by Marxists and Marx and Engels specifically criticized it; it’s incompatible with the basic Marxist framing of political organization. Lenin famously derogatorily referenced the quote, “the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile” and spent a lot of time crapping on it.
Vulgar materialism lends a helping hand to the ruling class as it gives a definitive answer to the question of whether you “should” decide to politically organize and foment revolution: “no and your question is invalid because you can’t choose to do anything”. Dialectical materialism is a direct response to both an idealistic dialectic (Hegel) and vulgar materialists (positivist-inclined liberals).
Humans have no issue with identifying cause and effect in everything but their own heads. To believe we are immune or that it is “unknown” is akin to believing in the soul imo. We aren’t special. Just another part of the universe.
Being part of the universe doesn’t change the metaphysical question, it just rejects a historical religious framing of it. Souls, a ghost in the machine, etc. Most people believe in the latter and have for a very long time, so it’s understandable that this is the usual object of the critique, but it doesn’t exhaust the question.
Where does your materialist free will come from then? lol
Who said I had materialist free will?
I’m just pointing out various inconsistencies and errors in thought. Whether I have a personal position that is super smart or the worst thing you’ve ever heard wouldn’t change the fact that these analyses or claims have the faults I’ve pointed out.
So you’re debating 19th century German philosophers on behalf of a 19th century german philosopher. All I mean by determinism is that free will doesn’t exist.
Marx is a 19th century German philosopher, though his philosophy was dead-set on building a framework for overthrowing capitalism. Diamat is weird German philosophy, it’s about 80% of why it’s so hard to understand in the first place.
So, philosophy nerds tend to separate determinism from free will for the purpose of asking whether they are compatible. When I see people saying free will doesn’t exist, that determinism is instead what’s up, and that science is saying things about the matter, I interpret you’re an incompatibilist that believes in a materialist determinism and an absence of free will. I see other folks in the comments making similar statements, including fatalistic ones.
So where am I going wrong?
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The vulgar materialism criticized by Marx, Lenin, etc is a passive one that will happily include social relations in its purview. It is primarily called vulgar in contrast to being dialectical. Where Marx, Lenin, etc see a capacity to drive revolution through class consciousness and revolutionary consciousness, emphasizing that this is a necessary piece of revolution that interplays with material conditions, their predecessors (and contemporaries, and subsequent critics) would more often stand back and say that the events unfolded due to, simply, the material conditions.
Here’s a Lenin quote among many: “The new Iskra-ist method of expressing its views reminds one of Marx’s opinion (in his famous) of the old materialism, which was alien to the ideas of dialectics. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, said Marx, the point, however, is to change it”
Lenin’s analysis is simple, possibly even simplistic compared to what he was referencing, but he played a big part in defining what the term means.
Althusser is also a good read on this: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1953/onmarx/on-marxism.htm .
Here we are, this is the quote that reveals the argument.
WE ARE NOT SAYING THERE IS A DETERMINED SET OF EVENTS THAT ARE DESIGNED TO PLAY OUT- our decisions, our goals, our beliefs ALL MATTER. We MAKE OUR OWN HISTORY and decide what WE DO AND WHAT WE SAY.
BUT.
THE THINGS PROVIDED TO US are, to an extent, out of our control- Eventually, we will find a variable we cannot directly influence, and eventually those variables reach beyond our “sphere of control” and those variables outside of our control as individuals still affect us (consider systemic discrimination, telling a random individual to simply act as if it does not exist is absurd, and the supernatural “free will” position basically asks everyone to do that about everything, but working together we can change a lot, and not in an unrealistic or absurd way involving anime power ups and screaming)
We can change the power we have and gain the ability to influence more things, even topple systems, but this does not happen in a vacuum- We gain the ability to do so because we gain the thought to do so because we observe reality or read a book or think about something- We do not spontaneously gain urges and desires from supernatural inspiration (probably).
So, I don’t really consider myself a determinist, because determinism implies a one true path everything follows that’s set out for us. I just think the original conception of “free will”- the very specific idea that every individual is some sort of anime-level entity capable of determining everything about their life through sheer willpower, which is used to justify hating the poor, the unhealthy, or the infirm- is complete bourgoisie bullshit.
I offered a framing like that - that choice exists constrained by material conditions (historically contingent, etc) - and OP rejected it and started talking about 2 or 3 other things. You may want to reconsider who the “we” is referring to and if you really agree with each other. As a reminder, they also said free will was disproven by science lol.
I think several folks here are just starting to learn about these things and are making mistakes. That’s not a problem in itself unless there’s a resistance to seeking understanding, of adopting defensive behavior rather than accepting and contending with criticism, etc. Then it becomes difficult to share understanding and mutually arrive at correct thinking.
If you read what I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, you’ll find several quotations, references, and reframings that all say the same basic thing about the nature of choice, will, etc in diamat as characterized by Marx and Marxists. A lot of it overlaps with what you’re saying, but none of it seemed to resonate with any of those rm disagreeing with me. What do you think that says about the positions here and the nature of the disagreement?
PS this statement is… not correct: “I just think the original conception of “free will”- the very specific idea that every individual is some sort of anime-level entity capable of determining everything about their life through sheer willpower, which is used to justify hating the poor, the unhealthy, or the infirm- is complete bourgoisie bullshit.” I doubt anyone knows the first conception but even the old ones were more sophisticated than this. Even the organized religious ones were. And they all predate capitalism and the bourgeois class.
Bourgoisie in that it is used to justify bourgoisie ideology in present day
And I do think people are rejecting your explanations because the conversation just sort of started hostily and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was enough to stop people from trying to reconcile
The old concepts of free will aren’t used to justify bourgeois ideology… bourgeois ideology created new versions and normalized them, leading people to believe it was always so. For example, if you used an etymological definition of original you’d be referring to the one of the Roman Catholic Church whose religious framing is entirely replaced within capitalist ideology.
I can’t imagine what you think is hostile in how the conversation started.
You and EB have a similar compatibilist viewpoint. I am skeptical of compatibilism because I have yet to hear a coherent argument for any sort free will that is not agnostic. I never said it was disproved by science, just that I can find no scientific arguments for it. Maybe I should check out Dennet.
I haven’t actually stated my viewpoint and I’ve reminded you of this several times.
Exactly, but where does dialectics debunk determinism. It’s very easy to have a dialectical view of nature and still not believe in free will.
That’s not generally how philosophy works. I’m just pointing out the basis of diamat as framed by Marx et al. You are free to hold whatever position you want, I don’t really care, but holding hard and fast to determinism and no free will is a rejection of diamat.
How? I am no mechanical materialist, I just didn’t realize I need to write an essay on dialectics to show such. Believing in “free” will is a rejection of diamat because it implies an entity beyond material reality with the power to control one’s body.
I have said how several times already.
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See: the other 30 replies
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It’s not hard to find folks here using this as a form of fatalism, including vulgar materialism. It pops up both in the form of saying proletarian revolution and socialism are inevitable and in those who take hard determinism (often without even knowing that’s what it is) to its logical conclusion of the idea of trying to do anything to build revolution being a category error. I would like people to organize, not paralyze themselves with their first foray into philosophy.
I am a dialectical materialist. The material world is a lot more complicated than some determinists make it seem. Just because there are contradictions in everything doesn’t mean determinism is disproven.
One of Marx’s main things was in picking fights with Feuerbach on this exact issue, though, and Dialectical Materialism is strictly incompatible with vulgar materialism.
This is an interesting reading on the topic: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/
I’m not saying you can’t personally be a determinist but it is a contradiction to say someone is both diamat and a materialist determinist.
From that reading: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated”
Unless “materialist determinist” means something incongruous with the words used to name it here, you’re being silly. The material dialectic is one of matter with matter. There can be no coherent Marxism that isn’t one of compatibilism on the basis that humans are materially reducible but what they can be reduced to is still much more complex than just receptacles of their experiences.
In essence, there are crass materialists who use determinism to try to smuggle absurdly abstracted fatalism in the garb of science (and the lazy meme in the OP comes off as this), but that has nothing to do with a proper materialist assessment.
???
OP is clearly referring to determinism in a materialist sense and one that leads to a poverty of action. Early on, Marx struggled with this in critiques of Feuerbach et al and eventually settled on a more coherent conceptualization of dialectical materialism that centered social forces. A rigid subscription to determinism and a rejection of free will implies a poverty of action and a resignation. Anyone can feel free to adopt that, just don’t call it compatible with dialectical materialism or Marxist thought more generally.
OP has rejected free will and appealed to a materialist determinism, citing science. This is not exactly a compatibilist framing lol.
I would say that vulgar materialism is still proper materialist, it’s just not Marxist.
I’m not invested in the philosophical debate itself because it’s pretty clear basically nobody actually reads 19th century German philosophy, and rarely carefully, and that’s what would be needed to go back and forth on a level deeper than where I’m trying to keep it: “Marx said X” and not “Marx was right because [nerd terms]”. I also don’t think it really matters other than to push back against, as you mention, fatalistic thinking. This tends to paralyze in either extreme: that revolution is inevitable so you can observe the world without dedicating yourself to revolution or that you lack agency and the future is simply out of your hands, good or bad. I’d like to see folks joining and creating orgs and gaining the skills of getting people to engage in collective action.
There are different kinds of determinism that get called materialist, and my argument hinges on separating them. As an example, there is economic determinism (here is someone arguing Marx is not that), which though metaphysically materialist is idealist in the Marxist sense of relying on abstraction that rejects some aspects of causality in the material world. In The German Ideology, for example, he refers to Hegelians as idealist in this special sense because they considered only, to put it crassly, their intellectual circlejerking over Consciousness and so on as though all of humanity was causally downstream from this when that is plainly not the case. Likewise, though it appears more materialist than whatever the Hegelians were doing, economic determinism is still discounting the causality of non-economic factors in the world and therefore meets this particular definition of idealist. Among these non-economic factors, of course, are things like the person’s own psychology, or those aspects which cannot be credited to their economic position (we can start with their perception of space if it must be proved that such aspects exist).
So what I’m complaining about are determinist framings that claim the idea of materialism while discounting factors that exist within material reality. Whether you choose to act or not is itself a material factor, and the fact that Laplace’s Demon could have predicted it is beside the point. There is no overarching I-Swear-This-Is-Materialist-Guys Destiny that operates independently from your choices, those choices are part of the causal chain as they are both caused and causing. Anyone who uses a phrase like OP of “free will is an illusion” is surely deluding themselves into quietism with a belief in some kind of destiny that is absolutely at odds with sincere materialism. Such people are just renaming Fate to Science and misappropriating scientific anecdotes and rhetoric to clumsily defend this sleight-of-hand.
OP is being silly, but my point is that a compatibilist framing is one that endorses the idea of free will as an element of a nonetheless-deterministic system, which I think is the only way one can do Marxism coherently. Then again, I suppose this position comes from the fact that I think you need compatibilism to do anything coherently, so this isn’t nearly as focused an argument as I thought it was (and I didn’t think it was very focused to begin with).
In my defense, I do read Schopenhauer sometimes, but what you really mean I assume are the more popular authors like the Hegelians and so on. I do make some effort to read Engels carefully, but he has the merit of not being as interested in Hegel as Marx.
It sounds like we have basically the same opinion but just expressed it in ways that lead to miscommunication, lol.
If I were to tweak something to match my approach more closely, it’s that I consider diamat to be closer to a framework of investigation, one epistemology (that I’m a fan of) among several, just like “the” scientific method or the accumulated knowledge of communities that doesn’t fit cleanly into a Eurocentric framing. I don’t really need it to be more than that, so I’m okay with the idea that it also has its limitations. What matters is that we can become more determined and better at building revolution - and diamat definitely helps in one’s thinking about it.
Re: 19th century German philosophers I have regrettably read many. It’s only useful for exactly this topic, which is to say, not very. Wiederholen sie auf Deutsch. Okay it’s also useful for one other thing: I can make toxic Trots and DSA libs shut up sometimes irl.
Fun fact: Freud used plain German words for id, ego, etc. Academics that love to get up their own asses decided to make them Latin in translation.
Where did I imply this, allow me to quote myself on my previous post.
There’s my dialectics.
The title of this post, the content of this post, and your first response to me.
How am I a vulgar materialist? You can’t just say “my idea is in this category, and yours is in that category, therefore you are wrong.” For your quote, where does that contradict my ideas. Yes, things are more complicated than acting like a person is a billiard ball or a pure subject. In dialectical materialism all things are subjects and objects, but where does the choice come in. All you’re saying is things are more complicated than certain determinists make out and I’m not denying that. P.S. Breht from Revolutionary Left Radio is a determinist and he’s as marxist as you can get.
Dialectical Materialism is not a sterile philosophical framework, it’s a cart being driven by the horse of stoking revolutionary action. Marx’s writings were about how to be a revolutionary, why be a revolutionary, what is fundamentally at issue with capitalism that requires revolution, and how can we address revolution via the “right” epistemological framework. Its most basic statement is to reject (1) the (pejorative of) idealism, of placing a framework of understanding in the driver’s seat and conforming material reality to fit within in, and (2) vulgar materialism, which is to say a sterile materialism that says material forces caused X to happen and there ya go, end of story. In rejecting the latter there is a call to action, of recognizing the ability to self-shape and foment revolution through developed class consciousness, through revolutionary class consciousness. One of the reasons Marx spends so much time clarifying proletarians from lumpens and personally pushing to organize and radicalize. Diamat is a philosophy of activism.
Holding hard to this kind of deterministic thinking is a vulgarization that strips the entirety of the activist struggle. You seem to call something diamat if it recognizes mutual shaping of material conditions and society, but if that society and you and your org have no agency then the point is entirely moot. You have merely created a framework of describing a clockwork, not at all what Marx was getting at. The subjectivity addressed, for example, is not just being the subject of an object. As an epistemological endeavor, the whole point of diamat is to use it to explore how to build revolution. What you choose to build, how you advocate, who you fight and argue with, etc.
I’m not surprised that a Western self-labeled Marxist podcaster may be incoherent lol. The thing that characterizes the Western left more than anything is a deep urge to have and share strong opinions, to do insufficient self-criticism, and then call it a day, failing to actually organize anything. But I dunno I don’t follow or really care about that one dude.
I know what Marxism is and I know people affect society. I just don’t know where you think free will comes from. At this point it just seems like you’re mad I used the word “determinism.” I’ll have you know Breht is not a hot takes kind of guy except when he shows his raw emotions around palestine. He is a nuanced dialectician and the podcast where he mentioned determinism wasn’t meant to be widely seen or make anyone mad.
Why do I need to know where free will comes from? This line of pushback makes no sense to me. I do not need to provide a positive alternative for your claims to be contradictory. Contradictory claims are not good and true by default, waiting for a pure and good alternative until they can really properly be contradicted. What would be so bad about saying, “oh I guess this doesn’t make sense” and just… leaving it there and probing deeper later?
The hard line incompatibilist determinism you and others are mentioning is basically what liberals hold up as a straw man to criticize Marx’s strong emphasis on material conditions (including historical contingency on past human action) shaping all the context in which we operate, including the shape of our thoughts. Something something “like a nightmare”.
Re: podcast guy, maybe he’s fine who knows but I cannot recommend, “a podcast guy said it” as a supporting argument for why a philosophical position isn’t contradictory. Cold takes can also be incoherent and this one is about 150 years old.
That doesn’t mean its proven, either. The quantum mechanical world does not appear to fit our deterministic models. It suggests those models are only approximations of reality, that they only have a useful predictive capacity within a cosmically narrow set of conditions.
Maybe there’s a bit of pure randomness in the universe, how’s that a point for free will.
it’s unknown, the bit of the map that says “here be dragons”. Maybe there is some quantum component to the phenomenon we’re calling free will. Maybe it’s just a hallucination of meat. To say one or the other definitively isn’t happening, that it does not exist, would be a crude misrepresentation of the research.
GOOD post
Why thank you!