I’ve been feeling this for a while, and I’m trying to flesh out an idea here. Feedback is appreciated. I’ve been a leftist for a long time, and have studied theory and history in my lazy, hodgepodge way, and while I believe that materialism as the old boys theorized is definitely a useful tool and structure to view events and systems of humanity, it doesn’t have a kinda joi de vivre that I require to really get turned on by something. In my teens I was a lonely atheist, and in college I was a bewildered existentialist/absurdist and over the past decade or so I’ve been I’ve gotten out of straight materialism, starting with Buddhism and moving into reading and practicing stuff out of the western esoteric/occult tradition. I feel that the left has a tangible, essential moral and ethical center, but it hamstrings itself in its articulation by sticking with this materialist/mechanistic view of life and the universe. I want an enchanted left, I want a haunted left. I want a left where we honor our ancestors and speak to them, where we call upon the elements to help us, where we come together to bind our enemies and protect our allies in ritual chaos. Mostly I want a left that isn’t afraid to acknowledge the divine, that calls upon those forces and entities that can’t be seen but only felt. I want a left that can take leaps of faith into an uncertain future because We Have Faith. Faith in a Living, Breathing Something that we are all a part of, and so can act and rest in the knowledge that we aren’t alone in a cold dead universe, but rather vibrant cells in a communal, universal body.
Like, do I think there is only atoms and molecules? Or do I think like there aren’t things like ideas, or theories or tendencies or conversations between peoples over time?
Yeah that's not what that's about at all lmfao
"Materialism" (or what you really mean which is historical materialism) isn't about whether or not there exists the ideological, theoretical, or even spiritual. It has nothing to do with that. It's not a metaphysical statement, lmfao. When leftist theorists say "materialism" they're referring to a specific difference between how to view historical change. Specifically Hegel saw broad strokes of history through the lens of ideological development. For example something like the "renaissance." Implied in this is that the driver of what happens in the world is people's ideas. Marx's materialism is a direct response to this, where instead the driver is how we organize resources.
None of this has anything to do with fukn spirituality or whatever you're talking about. You can still be a priest or whatever you wanna fukn be. Historical materialism is just a particular way of assessing history. You can assess history in other ways too if you want, but bourgeois society tends to not, and in that exemption you serve their purposes, thus as a leftist you gotta do that.
Like buddy marx wasn't doing an epic atheism reddit moment when he talked about historical modes of production lmfao
Thanks for the clarification.