Types of materialism

[chelmsford]

O what an overwhelming tide of ungovernable indifference this evokes.
Which hand did the Buddha use to wipe his cosmic ass?

[LBird]

DJP wrote: “Thought this article on monism which was published today might be of interest…
https://iai.tv/articles/quantum-physics-reveals-the-unity-of-the-universe-heinrich-pas-auid-2584
”
“ “Manichaeism,” named after its Persian prophet Mani, advocates a worldview quite opposed to monism and claims that the world is caught in an epic struggle between good and evil. Through Manichaeism and similar philosophies, “dualistic” concepts such as angels and demons, God and devil, and heaven and hell received their prominent role among Christian beliefs.”

This is precisely the worldview of ‘materialists’, who insist on a separation of ‘mind’ and ’matter’, with the latter being prior to the former. It’s a ‘dualistic’ viewpoint, and its root amongst some communists is from Engels’ “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, and not from anything Marx wrote.
Marx’s ‘monism’ followed the German Idealists and their belief in ‘activity’ being the unifier of ‘mind’ and ‘matter’.
But whereas the Idealists regarded ‘god’ as the ‘active producer’, as the creator of reality, Marx insisted that Humanity was the socio-historic producer of its own ‘reality’.
Thus, humans can change their ‘reality’.

[LBird]

From DJP’s article:

“When the German poet and polymath Goethe, the philosopher Friedrich Schelling and the Romanticists revived Spinoza’s philosophy in the 19th century, it inspired scientists working on phenomena such as heat, steam, electricity, complex systems, and the origin of life such as Johann Wilhelm Ritter, who discovered UV radiation and the rechargeable battery, Hans Christian Ørsted who discovered the principle of electromagnetism, Michael Faraday, Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin or Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel who followed Spinoza in conceiving the universe as “a single substance that is God and Nature at the same time” even got himself announced as a monistic “antipope”. On the other hand, the credo of the Romanticists who stressed the priority of the creative subject over objective facts favored a development fostering alternative facts and pseudo-science that brought about an association of monism with esotericism.”

This is probably the key to further discussion: which supposed ‘version’ of the Romantics did Marx follow?

Or is the article written by a dualist, who separates ‘objective facts’ from ‘creative subject’?

[ZJW]

I don’t know what thread to put this into, but Dietzgen comes up so I’ll put it here.

The CWO’s review of a new book about Pannekoek (found to be both superfluous and ‘shoddy’ in its treatment of him):

https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2024-09-19/anton-pannekoek-as-a-revolutionary-marxist-a-review-article

[DJP]

The CWO’s review of a new book about Pannekoek

The book is actually written *by* Pannekoek. The review doesn’t particularly say anything about the actual contents of the book, just what they think should have gone in the introduction.

The best book *about* Pannekoek is probably this one:
https://libcom.org/article/anton-pannekoek-and-socialism-workers-self-emancipation-1873-1960-john-gerber

[ALB]

Here is what the May 1942 Socialist Standard said at the time it was published about the article by Pannekoek on “The Party and the Class” that the CWO text mentions. It also sets out our conception of a “party of the working class”:

http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/05/political-parties-and-workers.html?m=0

[ZJW]

Yes, indeed, not a review of a book *about* Pannekoek but rather a review of a ‘recent publication of some of his writings’. My bad.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 5 days ago by ZJW.

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