Letters to Red Flag-Covid Crisis, Communist Philosophy

Capitalist Governments Create Health Disasters here ♦ Disagreements about Dialectical Materialism here ♦

Capitalist Governments Create Health Disaster for the Masses

In El Salvador right now we have two problems. The first is that the management of the Covid-19 pandemic by the government is subordinated to the publicity of the government. In other words, there’s no real information about the magnitude of the new wave of infection. Neither is there official information from the ministry. So, there’s poor management of the Covid pandemic on the part of the ministry to protect the image and marketing of the government of El Salvador.

There is a surge in cases among teachers and students.  The Ministry of Education issued orders not to close the schools in spite of the fact that approximately 55 teachers and 8 students have died from the virus, according to reports in the local press.

Second, it’s been sixty years and governments everywhere along the political spectrum still haven’t renovated the only hospital at the third level of public hospitals. This is the only one that takes in patients in extremely delicate condition, and the only one that has doctors with this sub-specialty.  This in spite of the fact that private hospitals are building luxurious and sophisticated structures.

Health Care comrade in El Salvador

Disagreements about Dialectical Materialism

The recent series on dialectical materialism made some good points but has serious problems that should be taken care of.

The first problem is the length. The two installments add up to almost 1400 words. That’s a lot of reading, and at a fairly high reading level (grade 9). We should never forget that many of our readers have been poorly trained by the bosses’ educational system and have a lot of trouble reading long and complex texts.

This is especially important for articles on dialectical materialism, which has a reputation for being difficult. Publishing 1400 words on a basic introduction just reinforces this stereotype.

The second problem is with the content. The articles claim there are actually two kinds of materialism, the “old” and the “new”. I have studied materialism for a long time, but this distinction is new to me.

And nowhere, in one place, is there a concise definition of either one or the difference between them.

At one point we are told that “The old materialism simply said that everything that is real is made of matter.”  Sounds fine to me!

Yet it seems to follow that the “new” materialism says that some things that are real are not made of matter. Like what?

We have at least one answer: it says, without qualification, that “ideas are not material”. Not material? If they aren’t material, what are they?

This is blatant idealism. Everything that is real is matter (in motion). Ideas are forms of motion of human brains. No brains, no ideas.

The spread of ideas is a material change in the real world. The emergence of consciousness (hundreds of thousands of years ago) was one such change. More recently the emergence of communist consciousness is also a significant change in the real world. Eventually it will lead to the emergence of communism itself.

We need a truly materialist dialectical materialism to help us spread communist consciousness and change the material world. The “new” materialism is not what’s needed.

-Comrade in Canada

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