I think there is a difference between personal immortality and the continued applicability of ideas. Indeed, ideas often become most applicable after the death of their originator, simply because they attain a degree of separation from that originator, and are thus more “abstract” and “universal.” The originator of a particular idea or philosophy is often not cognizant of the full application, simply because he or she is an individual shaped by particular life experiences during his or formative years. This is why (for instance) any debate about whether Mao would personally have approved of contemporary China is irrelevant; SWCC flows from his ideas, and that is what qualifies the modern CPC as following Mao Zedong thought. If the continued applicability of certain ideas beyond the death of their originator is not accepted, we may as well abandon not only Marxism, but any kind of philosophy or ideology whatsoever. It is true that we cannot apply ideas dogmatically, without reference to material conditions; but that itself does not argue against the idea’s continued existence and vitality, any more than the fact that one must use a screwdriver correctly argues against the existence of the screwdriver.
I tend not to be optimistic about the ability of individual human beings to really adapt to new experiences, and to synthesize them into a coherent worldview – at least beyond a certain point. In my experience anyway, and a whole lot of history and literature seems to reflect it, most human beings don’t really change much after the formative years of childhood and adolescence. Everything after about, oh, 24 or 25 seems to be mostly crystallization, or in the best case scenario, development of what was already there. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Thus if Confucius were alive today, he might not be exactly the same person he was during his (historical) lifetime, but I very much doubt he’d have changed enough to deal coherently with the problems we face. The fact is, humanity changes it outlook as the material circumstances change. Individual human beings often do not.
About fear of death being individualistic: we fear death precisely because we identify our essential being entirely with our specific individuality. But this is not, as Marx points out in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the truly human way to look at death. Man is a species-being, and our outlook on death (in our particular experience, a human phenomenon), should be from the standpoint of species-being. That is, we identify our true essence with what is common and socially-developed – i.e., the essentially human characteristics of independence, creativity, and consciousness – and do not feel any loss at death, because we know these things will continue as humanity continues. This state of mind is not inconceivable; it is that which drives communist martyrs, even those who who were hardline atheists, to suffer death for the sake of the people.
The goal of socialism is not specifically to provide a life without suffering, but to provide a life that is, in human terms, meaningful. A level of material abundance in accord with the particular stage of the development of production is certainly necessary for this. But material abundance is a means to an end, for one can be as rich and comfortable as one likes and still be a miserable, useless old bastard. (Just ask Jack Ma, or rather, ask the regulatory officials who had to deal with Jack Ma). Human beings find happiness (in the deepest sense) by serving the people, and a human being’s short life is what makes such service meaningful. It is said that “death is the great equalizer,” and this is usually meant in the negative sense of “kings must die as well as commoners.” But it also has a positive sense, in that it enables everyone to achieve a similar level of revolutionary heroism. Each human being is given their life, and given it once – which means that spending or giving up that life for the sake of something larger than oneself is a uniquely meaningful sacrifice. This is ultimately, what is meant by a “communist morality:” not something metaphysical, but a recognition of individual meaning in specifically human terms.
Your last point is especially well taken, that if immortality is scientifically possible, all this is probably moot. However, as someone who is not a scientist, and doesn’t have the leisure or money to become one, I still have to form some kind of tentative opinion on the issue. And it is this; bourgeois scientists have been promising this kind of thing forever, and while life expectancy has certainly increased, individual lifespans have not lengthened all that dramatically. (The Hebrew book of Qoheleth, written between 450 and 180 BC, has the line “the lifespan of a man is seventy winters, or eighty if he is strong.”) I find it a bit suspicious that the capitalist media is trumpeting immortality again, right when the system is well and truly collapsing; it seems a distraction like UFOs, or Elon Musk saying that the colonizing Mars is the solution to all earth’s problems. I am not totally unsympathetic to an individual’s fear of dissolution, but so far, it seems to me that the domain of that kind of thing is still religion and philosophy – things outside the domain of science, revolutionary science included. There are religious communists, and communists who believe in the immortality of the soul. I respect them as comrades, but am very suspicious of any attempt to drag a metaphysical concept like immortality into the realm of science.
thanks for responding! i’ll try to be as brief as possible.
this is a little silly imo: i am not calling for the repudiation of all ideas after someone has died, this was the entire point of quoting mao in my response later. the point here is that ideas are always determined by experiences and material conditions, and the applicability of old ideas to the present should be determined by the extent to which the material conditions that influenced/produced the idea are still present or relevant. this is why mao’s ideas regarding the theory of knowledge are still very applicable, because people acquire knowledge in exactly the same way. lenin’s ideas on finance capital are still very applicable, but less so because finance capital has developed since his death. mao’s ideas on a theorized immortality are not, because he could not realistically conceive of how it would be applied, and his society was not even close to developed enough to administer, let alone develop, the theoretical medical technique.
this is where you need a better and more holistic sense of revolutionary optimism, because you’re repeating an undialectical idiom that we westerners are taught from a very young age: “people never change.” marxism and diamat understands everything as a process, and thus everything is constantly changing. if you can’t perceive the change, it’s because it’s either on a timescale or level of specificity/generality that is far enough from your personal experience to perceive it: we don’t notice dead wood rotting (time), we can’t see the motion of atoms in perceived solids (specificity), nor can we perceive the rotation of the earth around the sun (generality). if you can’t perceive people changing, then either you’re not looking hard enough or it happens on a timescale that is slow (again, a contradiction that would need resolving if immortality existed). and, you’re denying human change that is so obvious. after all, didn’t you change in order to become a marxist? in most cases people must change in accordance with their material conditions, or else they die! if youth is the best biological context through which people can quickly change, wouldn’t increasing our youthspan actually be good? and, finally, isn’t marxism the best means through which to not only induce change, but to accept and understand change?
yes, i accept that the increased lifespan of society is obviously more important than increasing individual lifespans. however, a marxist shouldn’t absolutely favor one over the other in totality, this is undialectical. after all, stalin is the one that said that socialism intends to free society in order to free individuals. it’s not possible to teach all people to be completely selfless, and it’s probably not desirable either because individual survival is important for society! but again, i accept that society is dominant over the individual.
there are many goals of socialism, but what is the primary one? in the broad sense, we can say that the primary goal is to take the reigns of society away from capital and move towards a classless society. in an even broader sense, the primary goal of a socialist society is to determine what the primary contradictions are within society, and to work towards resolving them. currently the primary contradiction is class, but at some point it will become lifespan, or health, or species, etc. in a more specific sense, the goal of a socialist society is to act in the interest of the working class to improve their lives, and consequently the lives of everyone in society. are cuban doctors not socialist for traveling the world to decrease suffering? and again, standards of suffering are also subject to change: if no one experienced aging, then we would have a different understanding of what the primary contradiction in terms of health would be, perhaps diseases given to us genetically. immortality, or wildly increased healthspans, would not necessitate the removal of pain, just excess pain in accordance with technological advancement.
let’s go ahead and be more specific about what i mean by immortality: an indefinitely increased healthy lifespan, with an indeterminate end. after all yes, nothing is immortal because ultimately the universe will end unless we resolve that contradiction billions of years from now. immortality is a shorthand for the potential to live hundreds, thousands, or millions of years: to us, the difference would be so huge that it would effectually be immortal, even though it technically would not. and, i’m sure there will always be more contradictions to resolve in the quest for increasingly healthy lifespan, but claiming that death is better than life, or is somehow necessary, is just ridiculous and ultimately conservative. yes it serves a function, but you didn’t respond to all the very clear and obvious social benefits from having a wildly increased healthy lifespan, which essentially amount to the accumulation of more and more experiences. and yes, we have all the reason to be skeptical of capitalist science, but at the same time we should be able to separate that skepticism of the application of that science from the actual science itself. like i said, only time will tell if this is real science. but, is it out of the realm of possibility to achieve great advances in healthy lifespan within 50, 100, 1000 years? not really, given that other life already experiences these possibilities.
Good points, which I’ll try to answer.
I think there is a difference between personal immortality and the continued applicability of ideas. Indeed, ideas often become most applicable after the death of their originator, simply because they attain a degree of separation from that originator, and are thus more “abstract” and “universal.” The originator of a particular idea or philosophy is often not cognizant of the full application, simply because he or she is an individual shaped by particular life experiences during his or formative years. This is why (for instance) any debate about whether Mao would personally have approved of contemporary China is irrelevant; SWCC flows from his ideas, and that is what qualifies the modern CPC as following Mao Zedong thought. If the continued applicability of certain ideas beyond the death of their originator is not accepted, we may as well abandon not only Marxism, but any kind of philosophy or ideology whatsoever. It is true that we cannot apply ideas dogmatically, without reference to material conditions; but that itself does not argue against the idea’s continued existence and vitality, any more than the fact that one must use a screwdriver correctly argues against the existence of the screwdriver.
I tend not to be optimistic about the ability of individual human beings to really adapt to new experiences, and to synthesize them into a coherent worldview – at least beyond a certain point. In my experience anyway, and a whole lot of history and literature seems to reflect it, most human beings don’t really change much after the formative years of childhood and adolescence. Everything after about, oh, 24 or 25 seems to be mostly crystallization, or in the best case scenario, development of what was already there. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Thus if Confucius were alive today, he might not be exactly the same person he was during his (historical) lifetime, but I very much doubt he’d have changed enough to deal coherently with the problems we face. The fact is, humanity changes it outlook as the material circumstances change. Individual human beings often do not.
About fear of death being individualistic: we fear death precisely because we identify our essential being entirely with our specific individuality. But this is not, as Marx points out in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the truly human way to look at death. Man is a species-being, and our outlook on death (in our particular experience, a human phenomenon), should be from the standpoint of species-being. That is, we identify our true essence with what is common and socially-developed – i.e., the essentially human characteristics of independence, creativity, and consciousness – and do not feel any loss at death, because we know these things will continue as humanity continues. This state of mind is not inconceivable; it is that which drives communist martyrs, even those who who were hardline atheists, to suffer death for the sake of the people.
The goal of socialism is not specifically to provide a life without suffering, but to provide a life that is, in human terms, meaningful. A level of material abundance in accord with the particular stage of the development of production is certainly necessary for this. But material abundance is a means to an end, for one can be as rich and comfortable as one likes and still be a miserable, useless old bastard. (Just ask Jack Ma, or rather, ask the regulatory officials who had to deal with Jack Ma). Human beings find happiness (in the deepest sense) by serving the people, and a human being’s short life is what makes such service meaningful. It is said that “death is the great equalizer,” and this is usually meant in the negative sense of “kings must die as well as commoners.” But it also has a positive sense, in that it enables everyone to achieve a similar level of revolutionary heroism. Each human being is given their life, and given it once – which means that spending or giving up that life for the sake of something larger than oneself is a uniquely meaningful sacrifice. This is ultimately, what is meant by a “communist morality:” not something metaphysical, but a recognition of individual meaning in specifically human terms.
Your last point is especially well taken, that if immortality is scientifically possible, all this is probably moot. However, as someone who is not a scientist, and doesn’t have the leisure or money to become one, I still have to form some kind of tentative opinion on the issue. And it is this; bourgeois scientists have been promising this kind of thing forever, and while life expectancy has certainly increased, individual lifespans have not lengthened all that dramatically. (The Hebrew book of Qoheleth, written between 450 and 180 BC, has the line “the lifespan of a man is seventy winters, or eighty if he is strong.”) I find it a bit suspicious that the capitalist media is trumpeting immortality again, right when the system is well and truly collapsing; it seems a distraction like UFOs, or Elon Musk saying that the colonizing Mars is the solution to all earth’s problems. I am not totally unsympathetic to an individual’s fear of dissolution, but so far, it seems to me that the domain of that kind of thing is still religion and philosophy – things outside the domain of science, revolutionary science included. There are religious communists, and communists who believe in the immortality of the soul. I respect them as comrades, but am very suspicious of any attempt to drag a metaphysical concept like immortality into the realm of science.
thanks for responding! i’ll try to be as brief as possible.
this is a little silly imo: i am not calling for the repudiation of all ideas after someone has died, this was the entire point of quoting mao in my response later. the point here is that ideas are always determined by experiences and material conditions, and the applicability of old ideas to the present should be determined by the extent to which the material conditions that influenced/produced the idea are still present or relevant. this is why mao’s ideas regarding the theory of knowledge are still very applicable, because people acquire knowledge in exactly the same way. lenin’s ideas on finance capital are still very applicable, but less so because finance capital has developed since his death. mao’s ideas on a theorized immortality are not, because he could not realistically conceive of how it would be applied, and his society was not even close to developed enough to administer, let alone develop, the theoretical medical technique.
this is where you need a better and more holistic sense of revolutionary optimism, because you’re repeating an undialectical idiom that we westerners are taught from a very young age: “people never change.” marxism and diamat understands everything as a process, and thus everything is constantly changing. if you can’t perceive the change, it’s because it’s either on a timescale or level of specificity/generality that is far enough from your personal experience to perceive it: we don’t notice dead wood rotting (time), we can’t see the motion of atoms in perceived solids (specificity), nor can we perceive the rotation of the earth around the sun (generality). if you can’t perceive people changing, then either you’re not looking hard enough or it happens on a timescale that is slow (again, a contradiction that would need resolving if immortality existed). and, you’re denying human change that is so obvious. after all, didn’t you change in order to become a marxist? in most cases people must change in accordance with their material conditions, or else they die! if youth is the best biological context through which people can quickly change, wouldn’t increasing our youthspan actually be good? and, finally, isn’t marxism the best means through which to not only induce change, but to accept and understand change?
yes, i accept that the increased lifespan of society is obviously more important than increasing individual lifespans. however, a marxist shouldn’t absolutely favor one over the other in totality, this is undialectical. after all, stalin is the one that said that socialism intends to free society in order to free individuals. it’s not possible to teach all people to be completely selfless, and it’s probably not desirable either because individual survival is important for society! but again, i accept that society is dominant over the individual.
there are many goals of socialism, but what is the primary one? in the broad sense, we can say that the primary goal is to take the reigns of society away from capital and move towards a classless society. in an even broader sense, the primary goal of a socialist society is to determine what the primary contradictions are within society, and to work towards resolving them. currently the primary contradiction is class, but at some point it will become lifespan, or health, or species, etc. in a more specific sense, the goal of a socialist society is to act in the interest of the working class to improve their lives, and consequently the lives of everyone in society. are cuban doctors not socialist for traveling the world to decrease suffering? and again, standards of suffering are also subject to change: if no one experienced aging, then we would have a different understanding of what the primary contradiction in terms of health would be, perhaps diseases given to us genetically. immortality, or wildly increased healthspans, would not necessitate the removal of pain, just excess pain in accordance with technological advancement.
let’s go ahead and be more specific about what i mean by immortality: an indefinitely increased healthy lifespan, with an indeterminate end. after all yes, nothing is immortal because ultimately the universe will end unless we resolve that contradiction billions of years from now. immortality is a shorthand for the potential to live hundreds, thousands, or millions of years: to us, the difference would be so huge that it would effectually be immortal, even though it technically would not. and, i’m sure there will always be more contradictions to resolve in the quest for increasingly healthy lifespan, but claiming that death is better than life, or is somehow necessary, is just ridiculous and ultimately conservative. yes it serves a function, but you didn’t respond to all the very clear and obvious social benefits from having a wildly increased healthy lifespan, which essentially amount to the accumulation of more and more experiences. and yes, we have all the reason to be skeptical of capitalist science, but at the same time we should be able to separate that skepticism of the application of that science from the actual science itself. like i said, only time will tell if this is real science. but, is it out of the realm of possibility to achieve great advances in healthy lifespan within 50, 100, 1000 years? not really, given that other life already experiences these possibilities.