Was talking to a classmate about Cuba and told him how embargoes and meddling is one of the main reasons that Cuba is so isolated and behind in many fields compared to other countries.
He snarkily asks why Cuba cares about sanctions since they're communist and shouldn't care about capitalist trade. I reply with something like "because they're marxist, and marxists don't believe in utopia." He gives me a blank stare so I continued talking about how the post cold war system is capitalist, so regardless of what you truly believe in, you have to play according to their rules. If the the system was socialist, then any remaining capitalist country will have to play by the socialists' rules or be left out.
He then says that's proof that Cuba is a failed state because they can't produce everything domestically and need to rely on other countries and that capitalists wouldn't need to play by anyone's rules. I told him that if Taiwan became communist or was reunited with China, the US would be on its knees begging to have access to its technology (okay, I didn't say those exact words because I was trying to stay away from snark). He had no idea what I was talking about regarding Taiwan's tech, so I then brought up how there are more failing capitalist countries in Africa and the Middle East and Latin America than there are existing socialist countries - which for the most part, are doing much better.
He then went on about how religious people are stupid and how Islam is the cause of most of the major conflicts of the modern world without any sort of outside influence. At this point I just chuckled and he ended the conversation. :wall-talk: He's a self proclaimed liberal, though I believe it.
Guess his major
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how is this materialist?
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but what does this have to do with materialism? its simply a statement, which I agree with
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A lot of people, including this guy, believes that countries (typically socialist ones) exist in a vacuum and nothing they do or happens to them is ever a result - partially or wholly - of another party.
but that's a position that has nothing to do with materialism. they believe cuba is a communist shithole, materially. there's nothing that makes your position more materialist than theirs.
Yes, and their reasoning is mostly out of touch with reality. It's not different than saying Napoleon waged wars because he was short or Putin is invading Ukraine because he has a terminal illness that makes him fat
Or a more relevant example, at the end I mentioned religion. A lot of Muslims don't like the west. Is it because their prophets wrote about hating people with blue eyes in the Quran? No, it's a cop out for people who don't want to trace the origins of the conflict
Im not saying they arent out of touch with reality. Irrational, sure, poisoned by ideology, absolutely, but this simply has nothing to do with materialism. Materialism isn't just being in touch with reality, it is a philosophical position that has many versions. I really don't like how marxist terms are vulgarized and thrown around incorrectly.
This is the most tedious Reddit-ass conversation someone’s started on here in awhile lmao
3 day old account
The fall of gzd has brought us troubles to overcome
Naturally lol
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Big 'M' Materialism is the belief that the physical conditions of the world are the primary variables in how history unfolds. Ideology - beliefs, cultures, values - can and do influence history, but the Material will always take precedence.
In this example, the PoliSci Major believe Cuba's modern woes are the result of their communist ideology. While this is a belief about a material place that exists in the world, it is not a 'Materialist' analysis. The perspective is divorced from the historical conditions of the region. Cuba has been under U.S. embargo since the sixties. There have been numerous attempts by the Central Intelligence Agency to destabilize the government and assassinate leaders.
If historical factors are not present in an analysis, if one doesn't acknowledge that the woes of a given nation are not 100% the result of ideology, then the analysis is less Materialist - regardless of the conclusions reached.
Again, you are saying that the statement is not materialist because it is detached from reality. Notice how showing that it is detached from reality with evidence is already sufficient in refuting the statement, without involving materialism at all. Materialist here is only a rigid signifier that confirms whether something is correct/incorrect.
Besides, ideology is not seperate from a materialist analysis
You are correct, I simplified for expediency's sake.
I was under the impression Materialism was a first-princaples approach to understanding history. Is there more to it?
:jesse-wtf: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
what is your point? I can say something ridiculous like Hitler was the choice of the German proletariat and that national socialism is the inevitable result of imperialist capitalism and is the final mode of production. Is this now more historically materialist? You will use evidence to refute this claim, as you do with all ridiculous claims like "cuba is a communist shithole“, but "I am materialist and you are not" is not a valid evidence nor conclusion.
Marx and Engels just threw historical facts out there and called them materialist all the time? The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon is just a description of the conditions leading to the rise of Napoleon, is the work itself more materialist than a summary of it? Are you saying we have to have a thesis and an editor to use the word?
At this point the word itself has evolved, as language does, to refer to history viewed through a marxist lens such that the facts are not distorted to liberal ideology. This has necessarily been in response to a political climate that increasingly lost itself in Baudrillard-style breakdowns of reality and propaganda through cybernetics. Making prescriptive claims about word usage are about as useful here as Spain trying to enforce standard Spanish in Latin America.
Marx and Engels was creating original work that disrupted mainstream consensus. They have wrote hundreds of pages on what materialism is/isnt and that is why when they used it, it actually meant something. There is no point in bringing up materialism when you are on a website for entertainment, neither is knowing history beyond propaganda particularly materialist. I am arguing this because I view this as a case of marxism being turned into a spectacle on the internet and diluted to the point of being useless and harmless. Whatever I agree with is materialist and marxist, what I percieve as reality is material conditions, everyone around me is a brainwashed liberal and only I am smart enough to be marxist. I then go on the internet to post about how I dunked on delusional liberals and lament at how stupid people are and how humanity is done for. Marxism is not for this.
Lmao, next I suppose you think you can educate libs out of calling me a tankie.
We want libs to call us tankie. Because we are right.
if anything I would be calling you a lib
what does that have to do with anything I said
The two conflicting beliefs and methods of analysis are materialism and idealism. Liberals are idealists which is the belief that human beings have ideas and then they shape the world around them according to those ideas. Communists on the other hand are materialists, which is the belief that material conditions shape the ideas that human beings have.
It's materialist simply because OP recognises that Cuba's poor conditions are not created by communism (the idealist analysis) but by the material conditions inflicted upon it by American embargo and not by the political ideas that they have.