I've been going through Crit's absolute beginner reading list and I keep putting down "Elementary principles of philosophy" and skipping ahead to the other books because I just fail to see the value in a deep dive to philosophy in order to learn about history and economy and so on. I would like to skip it completely but don't want to miss important fundamentals.
It's such a hard read for me because it keeps rubbing me the wrong way with stuff like
Then there are the scholars, unknowingly materialistic and inconsequential. They are materialists in the laboratory, then, when they come out of their work, they are idealists, believers, religious.
In fact, [the shameful materialists] did not know or did not want to put their ideas in order. They are in perpetual contradiction with themselves. They separate their work, necessarily materialistic, from their philosophical conceptions. They are "scientists", and yet, if they do not expressly deny the existence of matter, they think, which is unscientific, that it is useless to know the real nature of things. They are "scientists" and yet they believe without any proof in impossible things. (See the case of Pasteur, Branly and others who were believers, whereas the scientist, if he is consistent, must abandon his religious belief).
so I cant be a christian and marxist? Even worse I'm also a mathematician, I formulate ideas and theories and proofs with absolutely zero regard for any material reality. None. I will take an infinite number of unprovable, non-material statements as true, and to top it all off, unable to show that my axiomatic set theory is at least internally consistent, just believe it to be free of contradiction. Thus if someone proves how some seemingly obvious statement leads to a contradiction in my system I will thank them for proving that the statement must be false. In fact the proof of such nonsensical statements is often the highlight of a math course (I mean this kind of shit is awesome). The poor physicists then have to deal with the fallout of our complete disregard for material reality. But they're the scientist so what do I (speaking as an idealist mathematician) care, they're the materialists.
As a christian I at least double check if what I believe in contradicts scientific statements and amend my belief system, not deny the scientific statement (oh the earth wasn't created in 6 days? Guess I will have to revise what I assumed to be true). But why should the scientist care if I believe in a reality outside of the material one, they won't be able to study it anyway.
Now if I want to understand history or economy or anything else within material reality, I obviously have to use my senses or rely on the senses of others and study the state of the matter at some point in time that would have existed even if I didn't. Then formulate thought based on those observations. But why is it so important to literally always do that?
And what am I supposed to be getting out of this whole mess in order to better understand marxist/leninist/anarchist/whatever else theory????
Well you’re not really a strict materialist in the philosophical sense if you’re a Christian since a strict materialist would hold the belief that the terms “existing”, “reality”, etc, refer to the material world. That speaking about things that don’t have physical reality as existing is nonsensical.
And Marxism is a materialist ideology. But it’s not necessarily strictly materialist. Marxism would say that the only thing that matters in terms of improving the material lives of the people is changing the material world, but I don’t think it necessarily requires strict materialism and a rejection of spirituality.
If you wanted to say “as a Marxist then we need to teach all children how to pray to save their souls” then you’re not doing Marxism you’re doing Christianity but I think if you said “as a Christian I believe we should stop hoarding the wealth and share equally” then I think you are being a Marxist.
As for stuff like maths well that’s a different kind of truth, mathematical truth means something a bit different, it’s more saying it’s internally consistent rather than true. Or if you want to use the words true and false for this you absolutely can because that’s normal usage but it’s understood to be a kind of jargon referring to its consistency.
Dialectical materialism is a kind of extension or reinvention of Hegelian dialectics. Dialectical materialism can roughly be summarized as being a social science whose primary hypothesis is that the history of society and humanity can be understood as a series of equilibriums, more or less the same idea as punctuated evolution but applied to the way human society changes and adapts to the conditions that it creates for itself. And further that it’s the material conditions of that human society and the way society changes material conditions that drives the way society changes.
Marxism has a tendency that is anti-religious and strictly materialist but plenty of Marxists are religious while being materialists.
I am an atheist and I used to hold the idea that Marxism required atheism as well, but I’ve long since dropped that idea and now I actually think believing Marxism requires atheism is itself anti-materialist since what actually matters isn’t the ideas in a persons head but what they do and how they behave in reality.
What Marxism does require is an empirical and scientific mindset. Meaning a materialist process in understanding the world and its history but I don’t think it requires specific beliefs beyond that mindset, which it sounds like you already have in terms of balancing empiricism with your religious beliefs.
Accurate and succinct statement. A mistake that's been noticed through out the international communist movement in AES states that existed and still exist is that pursuing militant atheism is moving well ahead of where their respective people's are and attempting to drag them well ahead from where they'd be comfortably willing to move into reaction.
In this regard I would note that the PRC has a more correct stance on religion than the Soviets did but only due to the fact that they could learn from the lessons and mistakes made by the home of the revolution.
I think the religious landscape in China is far too different from Tsarist Russia which would explain their different stances on religion. There's no Chinese equivalent of the Russian Orthodox Church. China didn't even have a state religion for the vast majority of its existence, the closest being Buddhism during the Tang dynasty, which abruptly ended when one of the Tang emperor decided Buddhism had to go and embark on a massive persecution campaign against Buddhism to purge Buddhism out of Tang civil and social life.
That is true
This is also an accurate and succinct statement that illuminates the PRC’s choices along the road to socialism. All decisions (positive or negative) made have been in the shadow of the successes and ultimate failure of the world’s first socialist state.
Part of the PRC's correct stance on religion according to Document No. 19 The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question during Our Country's Socialist Period posted recently on hexbear is that:
To actually answer your question, dialectical materialism is really the cornerstone of Marxist theory and to understand any Marxist writer you really need to understand dialectical materialism.
Or well, you can listen to their appeals and see the truth in their statements without it but it’s thoroughly illuminating to understand their process.
It’s like pulling back the curtain and exposing reality. When a Marxist writer is writing for a broad audience, they can just point at what’s behind the curtain and you can agree “oh yeah that actually is obviously true” so in that sense you don’t need dialectics. But when you understand the theory and the process of dialectics, then you understand how they pulled back the curtain to expose reality which gives you a much deeper understanding.
Yeah that sure seems to be the consensus here thank you for adding your voice
Which is why it took me so long to actually look at what marxism is, all I "knew" about it is that it would require me to denounce my faith which is a big part of my identity. Faith and math was for a long time the only thing I had.
Stepping aside from philosophy to history; You've probably already read about this, but a lot of the anti-religious activities of AES states has to do with breaking and overcoming prior feudal power structures (which religious institutions were deeply embedded in). That isn't to say that there weren't excesses in suppressing religious authority or superstition, just that the suppression wasn't simply "religion bad."
You probably meant "wasnt" at the end there, but yeah I don't see institutionalised religion as a good thing and would argue it is antithetical to what Jesus taught and how the first Christians lived. I live in Germany as well where the church still holds a huge amount of capital so I completely understand where it came from.
Correct, edited for clarity!
You bring up several distinct and excellent points, great post.
I used to think Marxism must be atheistic as well. But that’s because I only knew the “religion is the opium of the masses” quote when I was a kid. It wasn’t until I read the full quote that I realized that even if communism was achieved - and because Marxism is not utopian - someone will always be unhappy or unfulfilled or suffering in one way or another.
Religion will always be apart of human life because reality will always not be satisfying or even ‘good’ to every person. Our goal should be minimizing the suffering as much as possible and promoting a sort of “material mindfulness” to those who are religious - being present on god’s earth and with his creations, because heaven is a long way out and you shouldn’t neglect everything else in pursuit of it.*
*if you look at all the famous good Christians out there, almost none of them neglected their fellow man. Sure, you got the occasion weird monk who devoted his entire life to god in the mountains and then prosecuted by some government, but most of them became notable because they were amongst the living and fed the poor, rescued repressed people, promoted socialism, etc.