askchapo

22756 readers

32 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

Posts must ask a question.
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What does materialism have to do with communism? (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

151 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

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

we’re all leftists here

Left and right are relative, not absolute. Americans think that Joe Biden is a leftist because they're all the way on the right. Norwegians think that social democrats are on the left because they're on the moderate right. Hardcore communists think that demsocs are on the right, and some neo Nazis would think Reagan was a leftist if they met him.

I'm further left than the average Hexbear user, so from my point of view the MLs and anarchists who don't understand far left theory are centrists. They're further right than me, but I'm willing to compromise and accept those people as being "in the middle".

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

okay, on hexbear when we say “leftist” we typically mean anti-capitalist.

can you explain how you are “further left” than MLs and anarchists?

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

I am an anarchist, but I'm further left than most of them for simple reasons like radical gender inclusion and neurodivergent advocacy. And for complex reasons like unrealism, magic use, and pagan revolutionary attitudes.

Anarchy is simply impossible if you come into the whole situation thinking there's no way for the human mind to conquer reality. That's a defeatist mindset that leads to weak praxis. I use magic to help trans and otherkin people escape the mental shackles placed on them by realist society. Realist "anarchists" tend to reinforce those shackles by saying things like "You can't become a dragon in real life, that's impossible." I say things like "Your draconic identity clearly leads you to a different experience of sexuality and body than a human. You're obviously nonbinary and you deserve to explore your dragonkin identity to the fullest, here's some magic to help with that."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

interesting, thanks for taking the time to explain!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Also, realists (be they Abrahamic or atheist) aren't really capable of accepting foreign religions to the fullest extent. Before the Romans came and fucked everything up, polytheists generally believed in the gods of foreign cultures as well as their own. The Romans used religion as a tool of conquest and said "actually there's only one pantheon, y'all have been worshipping Jupiter the whole time, surprise, now please don't revolt against us". Then they converted to Christianity and said "wait, there's only one god. Polytheism is fake and bad, every other god doesn't exist". Then atheism became popular starting in the Enlightenment, but in a post Rome world atheism existed primarily as a reaction to monotheism from people who didn't understand polytheism or history.

As an unrealist, I believe in all gods. What do I care if they're real, I'll believe in them anyway because it's a nice thing to do. And that's how most people felt about foreign gods before the Romans. But in the post Roman world, you have genocide from Christians who think it's a crime against the lord to be a dirty foreign pagan, and you have dismissiveness from atheists who don't really know the value of a religion because they're stuck in this realist mindset where they can't adopt the beliefs of foreign cultures. And I don't think the Stolen Generations in Australia were primarily religiously motivated, they were realist motivated. Capitalist realists wanted the aboriginal children to be taught about the "real" world, instead of aboriginal communist dreamtime "nonsense". And I don't think atheists are capable of fully understanding the value that's lost when 60,000 years of oral religious history is genocided away. That's a whole world, extinct. That's a whole world extinct for every single tribe that doesn't have anyone to tell its stories anymore. If you only believe in one world, you can't believe in the value lost there.

So I think realism has an important racial component that's often neglected.