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.
It sounds like we have basically the same opinion but just expressed it in ways that lead to miscommunication, lol.
Fair enough, that’s what most of these things end up being
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.
I dislike the idea of reducing diamat to “merely” a lens to view things rather than a scientific method that can and should be developed to overcome whatever limitations it has. You might like this essay, which unfortunately I can only find in audio form now. I don’t like show-and-tell philosophy where everything is a toy to be played with and then put away, it feels nihilistic.
Okay it’s also useful for one other thing: I can make toxic Trots and DSA libs shut up sometimes irl.
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.
So what is it? This whole argument seems to have started because you didn’t like that I used “determinism” positively in the title, as you assumed it implied I thought the universe worked in simple mechanics as Marx’s opponents did.
Your position from the first comment is free will and determinism both exist. I have never seen a reason to believe in free will. That is why we are at odds. I don’t know if I believe in determinism, but free will as most people use it is incompatible with dialectical materialism.
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.
Fair enough, that’s what most of these things end up being
I dislike the idea of reducing diamat to “merely” a lens to view things rather than a scientific method that can and should be developed to overcome whatever limitations it has. You might like this essay, which unfortunately I can only find in audio form now. I don’t like show-and-tell philosophy where everything is a toy to be played with and then put away, it feels nihilistic.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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.
Sorry for making my meme simplified without a long caveat explaining what I mean exactly philosophically.
Oversimplification is not anyone’s complaint here
So what is it? This whole argument seems to have started because you didn’t like that I used “determinism” positively in the title, as you assumed it implied I thought the universe worked in simple mechanics as Marx’s opponents did.
What is what? I think my criticism is pretty plain and I’ve had to repeat it many times.
Your position from the first comment is free will and determinism both exist. I have never seen a reason to believe in free will. That is why we are at odds. I don’t know if I believe in determinism, but free will as most people use it is incompatible with dialectical materialism.