this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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All of y'all need to get into the original meaning of that word. Radical basically just means "take a problem by it's roots".
The interesting part is what type of society/politics makes that some kind of slur.
Materialism is thinking of things and their development on the grounds of history and causality, like a play of material and its organisational emergent forms (like ideas and their neurons). Whereas Idealism means imagining some kind of methaphysical structure or idea behind thins, like a god or ghost (Geist, Hegel, Kant...).
Utopia refers to an imagined, but possible world. When well done/thought, it is what you think and feel about how things could be. By definition this seems impossible regarding the currwnt state of affairs, and utopia will never come put as you imagined it. History is too complex for that. It is still necessary to be able to think utopia somewhat, otherwise one cannot hope and everything is eiter determined or irrelevant.
Socialism utopian and scientific for reference
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/
I agree with your takeaway, although the "extreme" definition is right next to it and is perfectly valid too. It's indeed interesting how loaded the word is by default.
Materialists are reactionaries who imagine that the social conditions of capitalism are immutable realities. Idealists recognise that our consensus reality is socially constructed and approach topics of liberation and equally from a mature mindset.
Take money, for example. A materialist believes that money is valuable because a copper coin and a paper bill has an intrinsic worth. While an idealist knows the fact that the coin is a representation of the social construct of money, and that our reality is controlled by the beliefs of those who value money. Materialists are the people saying we should go back to the gold standard. Idealists are the ones saying to abolish money.
Gotcha, you believe Karl Marx and every Marxist to follow him was a reactionary.
You're deeply unserious.
Marx wasn't a materialist, he was a determinist. Materialism is a mistranslation of his views.
I know inventing reality is your whole schtick, but Marx was in fact a Materialist. Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy makes this very clear.
I'm not going to take you too seriously, you have previously denied all 3 major components of Marxism, those being Socialism, Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and Marxist critique of Capitalism via the Labor Theory of Value. Any actual analysis of Marx by your part needs to be viewed with the highest level of skepticism to begin with.
No you got that mixed up. Materialism (sometimes called neo-materialism) is well compatible with the constructivist arguments you are referring to.
It just says the world of ideas develops dialectical with the world of things and acts.
Idealists imagine ideas to have their own realm of existence with a mystical source of power, indepentend from said dialectic.
In your example this means idealists think the worth of a coin comes from itself, while materialists ask for the social processes that this property "worth" emerges from. This would have to be analysed both economically and in termns of constructivism
No we don't. We believe the supposed world of matter is a social construct created by people's belief, and that dialectics occur within the mind. We believe the "material" world arises as a result of mental dialectics. Meanwhile, materialists believe that matter just popped into existence in its own for no reason, with no cause, and that all we experience is matter.
For example, take a trans woman who has not yet begun HRT. According to the materialist, her body's male features are the true nature of reality, and our perceptions arise directly from her male body. The materialist refuses to bear any responsibility for perceiving her as male. Meanwhile, an idealist says that maleness is a social construct, and the true nature of this trans woman is her female identity. Her body is a visual symbol created by our minds and existing only within our minds. We bear responsibility for how we create this symbol. Perceiving her body as male is in most situations an act of violence. We have the choice to perceive her as female, and we should do so if that is her wish.
The way we perceive her body is informed by thousands of years of history of society, a dialectical process of causation intertwined with he patriarchy and the ideals of the enlightenment. A materialist denies all of this complexity and says that their perception of her body as male is objective truth, which simply appeared on its own with no social process informing its creation. They maintain the body is pure physics and their mind has no impact. This is irresponsible and dangerous.
What you talk about is a mechanistic kind of materialism, basically the over the top variant in wich the other side of the dialectics get lost.
And yes, things came into existence for no reason and no cause. Big bang, evolution, emergence of culture. No reason, no plan, no mechanistic predictable process, no god, no teleological history. Just interplay of material and ideas.
"Male = objective" is idealist, since it doesnt understand the interplay of the politics of gender
Nonsense. Idealists believe the physical world, including anatomical sex, is an illusion created by our minds. No idealist would say maleness is objective. But a materialist would. Because materialists believe in physical matter.
You should check out http://soulism.net for a further analysis of why materialism is reactionary.
You should read the Feuerbachthesen!
As it seems your goal when applying the activity of thinking is to travel the realms of mind and soul. Mine is to understand the world so I can change it for the better. As long as this persist, we will have different opinions. Not genuinly because of truth, but because of why we decide to think.
Have a nice day though.