this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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What does materialism have to do with communism? (hexbear.net)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I feel like I understand communist theory pretty well at a basic level, and I believe in it, but I just don't see what part of it requires belief in an objective world of matter. I don't believe in matter and I'm still a communist. And it seems that in the 21st century most people believe in materialism but not communism. What part of "people should have access to the stuff they need to live" requires believing that such stuff is real? After all, there are nonmaterial industries and they still need communism. Workers in the music industry are producing something that nearly everyone can agree only exists in our heads. And they're still exploited by capital, despite musical instruments being relatively cheap these days, because capital owns the system of distribution networks and access to consumers that is the means of profitability for music. Spotify isn't material, it's a computer program. It's information. It's a thoughtform. Yet it's still a means of production that ought to be seized for the liberation of the musician worker. What does materialism have to do with any of this?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't say I've heard of that book. I'll have to look into it.

About your theorem:

Tbh, I just kinda see it as an affirmation of the kind of materialism Marxism is talking about. There no eternal "Truth" to be perceived, it's all relative. In the context of natural selection, maybe truth is the best strategy to survive. When organism are struggling for the best fitness they are entering into a complex web of material relationships with their environment. This process of natural selection has been going on for far longer than humans have been able to conceive of it. Marxism is just the theory of evolution by natural selection but for the development of human society. Unless I missed the point of your theorem...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think you missed at least some of the point. Note that the theory of evolution holds true within any system of competing agents capable of hereditary changes. Even for memes, which can only exist in the minds of intelligent species. The theory of evolution holds true even in situations where the environment in which human beings truly exist is not a world. There must be an environment of some kind, yes, but that environment does not require matter, energy, spacetime, or any number of other symbols from our interface to exist. The FBT theorem does not depend upon there being a world in order to hold true. Rather, it erodes the concept of there being a world such as humans would understand it to be a world, because it confirms that our perceptions of the world are perceptions of fitness, not truth. Our reality is simply a tool to help us survive and reproduce. It is not passed down from God to show us truth.