so i’ve wondered for a long time about how leftists use the terms ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’, and how it relates to those terms usage in broader philosophical discussions on epistemology.
i may be incorrect in my interpretations, but it seems to me that leftist uses of the term (even its usage in some of marx’s writings, from what little i’ve read) are such that ‘materialist’ means ‘understands that the material conditions of a society drive its development via dialectical processes’ and that ‘idealist’ means ‘focuses on artificial/socially constructed ethical or legal principles (such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘rule of law’ and ‘free speech’) rather than material conditions of society like quality of life, literacy, etc.’.
the broader philosophical definitions of these terms are slightly different, however.
epistemologically, a ‘materialist’ is someone who believes that we can (and do) directly apprehend the mind-independent external world. this is contrary to epistemological idealism, which argues that we can only ever know the contents of our own mind. we can use these contents to infer things about ‘true reality’ but can never truly verify them.
ontologically, materialism argues that all of reality can be described in terms of physics, or that all facts of the universe are causally dependent on or reducible to physical processes. this is again opposed to Idealism, which argues that existence is in some way irreducibly and fundamentally mental.
so my first question for you beautiful posters is, are my perceptions of these definitions and usages overall correct or incorrect? How exactly does Marx (or Engels or any other marxist philosopher) use these terms, and do they intend an epistemological, ontological, or other interpretation? am i missing something fundamental about the philosophical definitions or about the colloquial/leftist usage? What’s the deal with that ‘philosophy is pointless, the goal is to change the world’ quote, is understanding reality not a benefit for efficiently manipulating it?
My next point, is that it seems to me like Marx and Engel’s Dialectical Materialism, or at least the political program and methods of Socialism/Communism, are not necessarily at all incompatible with either philosophical Idealism or Materialism, in terms of epistemology or ontology. Neither is necessarily incompatible with basic empiricism, but is rather a difference in interpretation of what our empirical knowledge is. Whether reality is fundamentally mental or matter, it consists of opposing energies and dialectical processes that play out in our experience with the extrinsic appearance of physical matter. Whether the world is in the mind or ‘really out there’, our experiences of it are the same.
A bit ago i stumbled across this article that seemed to be making a similar point, a point i’ve never really seen made by anyone else before. I haven’t read past the abstract yet, and It seems like someone random person’s college dissertation or thesis or something so I’m probably not well read enough to interpret this without context, so i was wondering if anyone had seen any similar discourse? What would Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao say about this line of thought? is it a heresy against socialism, a useless detour into pointless philosophical questions that serve no practical purpose for the revolution, or is it something potentially useful in framing Marxism’s relationship to epistemology and ontology?
Good question. Not sure I have an adequate answer because the final verdict will depend on which Marxist you ask. One thing I’ll note is that ‘material’ isn’t restricted to physics/the physical world.
Social relations are also real/material relations. Physics doesn’t or can’t explain money, for example, or racism; but both are materiel relations that we can see, observe, study, etc. Same for use value and exchange value. Both are material, although you can’t see them even under a microscope, no matter how much you look at a commodity.
Althusser even talks of ideology being material in ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’.
in that case, what is the difference between this kind of materialism and simple empiricism?
also, many (non-marxist?) materialists/ontological realists do claim that physics can and indeed does explain money, racism, and every other human thought and social contrivance. they use things like information theory to explain the physical existence of data, AFAIK
Good questions but I’m unsure of the answers. I’ll try.
Materialism is opposed to idealism. Dialectical materialism is opposed to idealist dialectics and non-dialectical (e.g. mechanical) materialism. To the extent that empiricism fits that model, it fits. But it depends on what you mean by empiricism. (I am no expert on philosophical empiricism.)
I don’t know anything about that view of physics but there are some issues worth mentioning. Realists can be idealist or materialist. And they can be non-dialectical.
If ‘physics can and indeed does explain money, racism, and every other human thought and social contrivance’, then it appears to explain everything and nothing. The claim implies that every valid explanation falls under physics because it is correct; and that no explanation is correct unless it falls under physics. If that’s true, we must reject all other disciplines as not-physics or subsume them into physics, which seems strange to me. Maybe I’ve misunderstood.
I don’t doubt that there are e.g. electrical signals in the brain that spark when someone is racist. Maybe one day we’ll be able to find out which signal relates to which slur, and consider the implications of that finding. But if the claim is something like, people are racist because of physics, I’ll have to reject it for the same reason that I reject the biological foundation of race. If it is only focusing on the former type of claim about electrical signals, we need to ask how much it can explain about the realities of racism and how to end it. If the answer is ‘not much’, we need something other than physics for the explanation. I’d say that something is dialectical materialism.
Dialectical materialism tells us that money, racism, gender, etc, are social relations. There may be dialectical materialist information theory, that melds the two.
Maybe part of the problem is that ol’ Cartesian thinking focused on the human mind rather than the population/community of individuals, the alleged causal implications from a presumed history, AND the material/physical environment in which they inhabit (and which they cannot be divorced from; ofc for convenience, not outside of such thought experiments or models)