Idealism is a philosophical concept, and it’s with great success that the bourgeoisie makes you think idealism is simply having ideas (or having ideas that can’t be achieved) and that materialism, or being materialistic, is about wanting to accumulate stuff.

Idealism and materialism answer philosophy’s fundamental question: what is reality? Idealists think that reality is subjective, because if you are colorblind you will see tree leaves in orange when they are green to a non-colorblind person. Yet this doesn’t change the fact that the tree leaves are green, no matter your perception. We used to believe that the sun was a yellowish disc in the sky with rays sticking out of it. Then we explored space and found out the sun is not a disc, it is not yellow, and it doesn’t actually emit rays.

So we understand that it’s not ideas or what you think that creates reality, but what is actually there. Reality exists whether you experience it or not. And it’s happened throughout history that we thought something was true and it turned out it wasn’t, but that still doesn’t make it true. We thought volcano eruptions were the result of spirits being angry but it turns out it’s a physics reaction – that doesn’t mean it was true back in the day because people thought it was true and didn’t possess the knowledge to know the physics of volcanoes. The mechanism was still the exact same.

Today idealism remains the dominant thought, because the liberals who theorized capitalism (in the Enlightenment mostly) were idealists. In school you will be taught about Kant or maybe Berkley, who were huge idealists, and that’s about it. Nothing on materialism, which is ultimately better than idealism in all aspects and should be taught to children – but that would undermine capitalism, so we can understand why it’s not in the program.

If you’re interested in the topic I can recommend Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy which is a very accessible book teaching idealism, materialism, and dialectical materialism.

Personally, as an ML, when I say anarchists are idealists I don’t mean this as an insult but as an observation – granted it’s not a compliment. Perhaps your experiences will be different but I have met my share of anarchists who think that you can just convince everyone that anarchism is better once they see coops in action (or more idealist yet, that we can change their ideas talking about it), and that they will convert to it. This isn’t really different from libs telling foreigners in imperialised countries that if we just gave them democracy they would see how good it is and never want to go back. It supposes that if you change people’s ideas, you will change their reality. In truth, and we have historical evidence (all of history really), you change people’s ideas when you change their material conditions. That is why we say you cannot reform capitalism, because it remains capitalism at the end of the day.

I really don’t understand why MLs think that would happen when it hasn’t happened at all in history.

It has, but never fully. For example, we used to have ministries for colonial affairs, and we don’t any more. When there is no point in having the state provide a service (or oppress people, when these people no longer exist), then it will eventually wither away. This process will eventually wither away the whole state.

Remember that the state is a tool of oppression of one class over another. It seeks to reconcile the class struggle but that is impossible, as there can be no reconciliation between the bourgeois and the proletariat (why would I want to be exploited, and why would the bourgeoisie not want to exploit me?). Once there is no more class to oppress, why is there the need for a state? There will be services of course, such as healthcare, but there would be no state, there wouldn’t be this tool of oppression.