this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
337 points (98.6% liked)
Socialism
5057 readers
82 users here now
Rules TBD.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
All of y'all need to get into the original meaning of that word. Radical basically just means "take a problem by it's roots".
The interesting part is what type of society/politics makes that some kind of slur.
Materialism is thinking of things and their development on the grounds of history and causality, like a play of material and its organisational emergent forms (like ideas and their neurons). Whereas Idealism means imagining some kind of methaphysical structure or idea behind thins, like a god or ghost (Geist, Hegel, Kant...).
Utopia refers to an imagined, but possible world. When well done/thought, it is what you think and feel about how things could be. By definition this seems impossible regarding the currwnt state of affairs, and utopia will never come put as you imagined it. History is too complex for that. It is still necessary to be able to think utopia somewhat, otherwise one cannot hope and everything is eiter determined or irrelevant.
Materialists are reactionaries who imagine that the social conditions of capitalism are immutable realities. Idealists recognise that our consensus reality is socially constructed and approach topics of liberation and equally from a mature mindset.
Take money, for example. A materialist believes that money is valuable because a copper coin and a paper bill has an intrinsic worth. While an idealist knows the fact that the coin is a representation of the social construct of money, and that our reality is controlled by the beliefs of those who value money. Materialists are the people saying we should go back to the gold standard. Idealists are the ones saying to abolish money.
Gotcha, you believe Karl Marx and every Marxist to follow him was a reactionary.
You're deeply unserious.
Marx wasn't a materialist, he was a determinist. Materialism is a mistranslation of his views.
I know inventing reality is your whole schtick, but Marx was in fact a Materialist. Politzer's Elementary Principles of Philosophy makes this very clear.
I'm not going to take you too seriously, you have previously denied all 3 major components of Marxism, those being Socialism, Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and Marxist critique of Capitalism via the Labor Theory of Value. Any actual analysis of Marx by your part needs to be viewed with the highest level of skepticism to begin with.