Materialism, aspects and history.
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Rousseau`s Discourse On Inequality anticipated both Darwin and Engels. Jean-Jacques sees in this, which I consider his most important work, human society as an evolutionary process, and the work is a pre-Marxian (explaining its limitations) historical materialist expose.Rousseau may have believed, or so he said, in a God, but, like previous materialists such as Margaret Cavendish and Lucretius, his god is non-committal and distant, and hence irrelevant. The work is an historical materialist anticipatory masterpiece and should be of interest to us. It roots inequality, war and human misery squarely in society, not nature and gives the lie to the human-nature mythmakers.I consider it far more important a text than his later, bourgeois and resigned, Contrat social.
John Oswald wrote:I am opening this topic for discussion on materialism, whether mechanist or vitalist, and on the materialists, whether Marxist or prior to Marx. This would include the Enlightenment materialist writers, aspects of materialist philosophy, and even the ancients, if so wished.I've just had my temporary ban lifted, John, and so I am now able to participate in your discussion about Marx and 'materialism'.For starters, then, you do know that Marx wasn't a 'materialist'?If the term 'materialism' is applied to Marx's thought, then it's entirely correct to add 'idealism', too.In that sense, Marx was an 'idealist-materialist'.That's why those who followed after Marx, including Engels, always prefixed their name for Marx's thought with an additional word which dealt with 'ideas' and 'consciousness'. So we have 'Historical Materialism' and 'Dialectical Materialism'.Unfortunately, since Engels erroneously proclaimed that the religious world of good and evil was applicable to 'Marxist' thought, and he deemed 'materialism' as 'good', and 'idealism' as 'evil', ever since the term 'idealism' has been avoided by the religious devotees of Engels.The religious haven't read Engels, of course; as good 'believers', they just take what they've been told by earlier generations of believers as 'The Truth'.The religious 'Engelsians' also avoid reading Marx's works, because any familiarity with Marx's works, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Theses on Feuerbach, German Ideology, Grundrisse, or even Capital, makes it obvious that Marx was an Idealist-Materialist.Are you interested in a discussion, John? If not, just ignore this post.
LBird wrote:For starters, then, you do know that Marx wasn't a 'materialist'?If the term 'materialism' is applied to Marx's thought, then it's entirely correct to add 'idealism', too.In that sense, Marx was an 'idealist-materialist'.In all seriousness surely you've got to ask yourself why no-one else has said that, ever…
DJP wrote:LBird wrote:For starters, then, you do know that Marx wasn't a 'materialist'?If the term 'materialism' is applied to Marx's thought, then it's entirely correct to add 'idealism', too.In that sense, Marx was an 'idealist-materialist'.In all seriousness surely you've got to ask yourself why no-one else has said that, ever…
In all seriousness, it can't be your ignorance of the numerous thinkers who have said just that, because I've given you endless references to follow up, so I've got to assume that your religious devotion to 'matter' blinds you to the bleedin' obvious.Why you won't read Marx, where he says that he took from both idealism and materialism, and where he says that for him 'materialism' is human production, just baffles me.And why you won't accept that it was Engels who went on about 'matter in motion', and not Marx, leaves me convinced that you have a religious devotion to 'matter'. I can't shake your faith. Nothing I explain, no quote from Marx, no passages from Dietzgen or Pannekoek, nothing makes any impression.Anyway, we've been here before, so often, why not just leave this discussion to John, if he's interested? You're not forced to read it.
LBird wrote:Anyway, we've been here before, so often, why not just leave this discussion to John, if he's interested? You're not forced to read it.I feel it my job, particularily on my party's website, to challenge ignorance and distortion. You on the other hand clearly believe that you should be allowed to pedal your rubbish and abuse unchallenged. That sort of enviorenment would not be conducive to enlightenment.
Vin wrote:LBird wrote:Anyway, we've been here before, so often, why not just leave this discussion to John, if he's interested? You're not forced to read it.I feel it my job, particularily on my party's website, to challenge ignorance and distortion. You on the other hand clearly believe that you should be allowed to pedal your rubbish and abuse unchallenged. That sort of enviorenment would not be conducive to enlightenment.
Another insulting post from the benighted religious adherents of 'materialism'.The 'rubbish' that I'm 'pedalling' is the same 'rubbish' that Marx 'pedalled'. But you wouldn't know that, would you, Vin, because you take your faith from Engels, at his most nonsensical.As to 'enlightenment', your sort of 'materialist' keeps telling us that 'matter' should have the final say (and you got this from bourgeois science at its height, in 19th century positivism) in what 'truth' is, rather than a democratic vote by workers. You genuinely believe that the rocks talk to you (well, not you personally, because you think that you don't have the personal capacity in conjunction with other workers, plus you have cloth ears), but talk to your heroes, the bourgeois scientists, the physicists who Einstein disproved.In fact, many physicists today reject the priestly role that the 'materialists' allocate to them. Just the other day, Brain Cox said as much in The Guardian. I can't be arsed giving you a link, because I know you never read anything that you're advised to read, because you have 'faith in matter', the unchallengable source of Truth for the Religious Materialists, who follow the teachings of the high priest Engels.Why don't you just leave one thread for a discussion for those who are genuinely concerned to see Workers' Power, and not your lickspittle crawling to the bourgeois experts?You won't have democracy in truth production, will you, Vin, because you think an elite has a politically neutral method to ascertain The Truth?
Just a quick aid, Wikipedia is good on this:
Quote:Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are the result of material interactions.It's as simple as that. The extension is, then, that ideas, perceptions, concepts, etc. are themselves material, and part of material processes. Thorough materialist monism opposes theoretical dualism that affirms some sort of distinction or opposition between matter and ideas, or, indeed, primacy of one over the other (since they are both the same thing).
Young Master Smeet wrote:Just a quick aid, Wikipedia is good on this:Quote:Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are the result of material interactions.It's as simple as that. The extension is, then, that ideas, perceptions, concepts, etc. are themselves material, and part of material processes. Thorough materialist monism opposes theoretical dualism that affirms some sort of distinction or opposition between matter and ideas, or, indeed, primacy of one over the other (since they are both the same thing).
But your post itself isn't as simple as that.On the one hand, you argue that 'matter' is 'fundamental'.On the other, you argue that 'ideas' are 'material'.These are contradictory statements of belief.If 'ideas' are 'material', why can't one touch them? If 'material' and 'matter' mean anything, they mean not 'ideal' or 'ideas'.You are merely repeating 19th century dogma, as espoused by Engels (in his nonsensical moments), based on 'materialism' (that he thought Marx agreed with), that 'matter' (or 'being') is fundamental, rather than the 'ideal' (or 'consciousness').If fact, to follow Dietzgen, nature includes both 'material' and 'ideal', matter and ideas, being and consciousness.To say either is fundamental, is to separate the unity of nature.Marx did not regard 'matter' as fundamental. Marx argued for 'material production', by which he meant 'social production'. So when Marx says 'material', he means 'production'.By 'production', Marx means 'theory and practice' by societies.'Theory and practice' requires both 'ideas' (for the 'theory') and a 'material substratum' (Marx's term) which is worked upon to produce the human-natural, both in the 'material' and in the 'ideal'. We require both houses and knowledge. We are both being and consciousness.You, like Vin and all the other Religious Materialists, get your ideas from Engels, and his separation, in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, where HE identifies 'idealism' as 'bad', and 'materialism' as 'good'.God knows, I've given the quotes enough times to back up all that I'm claiming, but nothing makes any impression on The Faithful.Keep playing with words, YMS, and carry on confusing generations of workers, who, if it is claimed 'ideas and matter are the same thing', will, quite rightly, regard you as an idiot, and avoid you like the plague.At the very least, they'll ask, as do I, why, if 'ideas and matter and the same thing', why not call this belief 'idealism-materialism'?It's because you say one thing openly, that 'matter and ideas are the same', but hiddenly you don't believe this, you believe in 'matter' or 'the physical' and thus won't agree to the use of 'Idealism-Materialism' for Marx's ideas.Your beliefs are not only contradictory to anyone who asks, but they are nothing to do with Marx's beliefs.Do you want the quotes, yet again?
There are many things I can't touch, some fundamental particles are passing through me right now (I forget which species), doesn't mean they aren't parts of matter. Ideas cannot exist without brains, words, humans to concieve and carry them, without signifiers to convey them. I cannot exist in the world without changing it and being changed by it. Ideas are as much to subject to cause and effect as a rock is, and ideas have effects also.Ideas are not a pale shadow of the world, nor a relfection, but part of the ongoing process, a brain cannot exist without thoughts and ideas just as mjuch as an idea cannot exist without brains.I won't use idealism-materialism because I think it's a term that is misleading, unecessarilly fully of letters compared to the much shorter materialism.The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.
"You will be lost unless you remember that the fruits of the Earth belong to everyone and that the Earth itself belongs to no one." – J.J. Rousseau.
"Unnecessarily full of letters"?Is this a serious response to an epistemological discussion about Marx's views?Well, I'll go with that.'Id-Mat' is shorter than 'materialism' by five characters.John, where are you?
I think all this, above, is so much academic-style verbiage. "Idealism-materialism"? "Religious materialists"? Sorry. Not for me.
John Oswald wrote:I think all this, above, is so much academic-style verbiage. "Idealism-materialism"? "Religious materialists"? Sorry. Not for me.No problem – at least you're not pretending to be a religious fanatic, like the 'materialists'!
I'm slow on the uptake, YMS!Why not call your belief 'idealism', rather than 'materialism', if you really believe ideas and matter have the same value? 'Idealism' is shorter than 'Materialism'.I know you won't, because you're kidding both us and yourself about ideas and matter, aren't you?You believe in 'matter', don't you? And you believe that it speaks to physicists, too, which is why you won't have a democratic vote about 'Truth'.You are an elitist, both in epistemology and in politics.
And Stuff is shorter yet: however, I am convinced that stuff existed before consciousness, and the world is not a dream of God, and thought alone does not change the world. No amount of voting can change the timing of the tides: although ideas, like the Swansea tidal barrage can change them when turned into action.
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