Communist Philosophy Matters here ♦ Dialectics-Revolutionary When United with Materialism here ♦ Communism Fights to Create Heaven on Earth here ♦
This photograph, from South Africa, April 2017, shows a comrade posting the ICWP May Day poster in his home, covering a framed prayer.
Communist Philosophy Matters
A letter in the last Red Flag criticized a previous two-part article on materialism and revolution. The comrade author of the letter had two main criticisms: (1) The articles are long and difficult to read; (2) He disagrees with their attempt to differentiate between old and new materialism. The following two letters respond.
Spread the New Materialism
The critic ends up sliding towards idealism.
The letter particularly identifies the sentence “ideas are not material.” The author of that letter calls this blatant idealism. This is narrow reading of the article, as the previous sentence clearly indicates that “Ideas are products of material systems: that is, of human brains and social structures”. This seems to be consistent with the comrade’s statement that “Ideas are forms of motion of human brains.” The question, then, is motion itself matter?
The letter also says that the series makes little to no distinction between the old and new materialism. I think this is mistaken. In the first article a distinction is made: the old materialism limited itself in only defining the natural world as being made of matter, whereas new materialism by Marx and Engels added the social and historical dimension to it. This implies that the new materialism is the old materialism (natural world made of tiny invisible matter) with added dimension of social and historical relations.
The critic then says “the spread of ideas is a material change in the real world as with emergence of communist consciousness.” This is correct for the same reason that it is correct to spread “new materialism” which incorporates ideas, history and social relationships as fundamental to real change in the world.
The length of the articles is a dilemma faced when writing on materialism. Generally, it is accepted that the subject is complex which makes it difficult explain in simple and few words. However, I agree that long articles can at times be counterproductive. For this reason, , a collective effort must be made in order for dialectical materialism to be more accessible.
-A comrade
Dialectics: Revolutionary Only When United with Materialism
Marx and Engels spent decades working out the new materialism (dialectical materialism). It is impossible to understand the role of ideas in communist political work without it.
The key difference between the new materialism and the old is that new materialism focuses on the material structures of society, while the old one confined itself to the natural world. Since thinking does not affect the laws of nature, old materialism could afford to ignore thinking.
Once some social structures are recognized as material, however, thinking cannot be ignored. Thinking is essential to all social relationships, so the new materialism must explain the relation between thinking and material reality. Engels called this the “great basic question” of philosophy.
To explain it, Marx developed the concept of “the ideal.” The ideal consists of concepts, theories, and ideas–including scientific, political, artistic, and religious thinking–that represent material reality.
The idealist view is that the ideal is independent of material reality, that it is supernatural and evolves on its own. Marx rejected this. He wrote that “the ideal is nothing else than the transfer and translation of what is material into the human head.” The production of the ideal is a social process, depending on human language and communication.
Marx used the concept of the ideal in his economic works. He wrote that the values of commodities are material, the amounts of workers’ labor needed to make them. Values are the key factors in production and exchange. Prices are ideal but make a difference, varying above or below values.
Political theories also make a difference but are not material. So far, communism is a political idea, only partially realized materially in early human societies. Our party’s goal is to make the communist ideal into a material reality. Doing this involves winning the masses to agree with communism and work to create it.
When a person joins our party, they adopt communism as their goal. That influences their behavior. The fact that ideas and theories can influence how people change reality shows that the ideal is something real. But that does not mean that the ideal is material.
The letter writer claims that “Ideas are forms of motion of human brains. No brains, no ideas.” They are certainly right that there cannot be ideas without brains, at least unless artificial thinking machines are invented. But their definition of ideas is not helpful. An idea is not a process in anyone’s brain. Instead, it is the content that can be present in different brains, or in books, pictures, databases, etc.
For example: In Spanish “El cielo es azul” means the same as “The sky is blue” in English. These two statements express the same idea, but they are different statements. They are processed in different ways in people’s brains. Someone could express the same idea painting a picture. People share ideas even when they express and process them differently.
The ideal depends on the material. Brains (and hands) are essential in creating, spreading, and maintaining the ideal. But what is ideal is part of social reality, not dependent on any particular material representation.
We cannot understand the relation between the ideal and the material if we think the ideal is material. Much political struggle is about the ideal, but material communist revolution is the only way to escape from capitalist hell. Even the best ideas will not defeat capitalism by themselves.
The letter writer says they have never heard of the distinction between the old and the new materialism. That implies an important criticism of our party’s philosophical study. We have directed our study mainly to dialectics, and not to materialism. But dialectics is revolutionary only when it is united with materialism. Self-critically, previous philosophy articles I have written myself have seriously neglected materialism.
-Another comrade
Communism Fights to Create “Heaven on Earth”
NOTE: This article is the first in a series intended to help with discussions about communism and religion. Future articles will address other religions besides Christianity. We welcome responses and contributions.
Communists are materialists. In part, this means that everything that exists is part of nature. Through practical experience and scientific study, people can learn about the laws of nature and social development that have brought us into existence and allow us to work and change the world.
In communist philosophy, “idealism” does not mean having ideals or values. Instead, it is quite the opposite of Materialism. It means believing that supernatural beings or forces directly or indirectly influence the material world. Some argue that idealism (in this sense) should dominate the world, rather than reflecting on material relationships as materialists say.
Human actions have never been guided by spiritual beings or forces because such things do not exist. As a comrade says, “If you believe that god is real, you might as well believe that wrestling is real.”
Human actions are guided by thinking, whether good or bad. But thinking alone cannot change the world. Therefore, materialism means that when people are guided by an idea, only then can we change the world by some kind of work. The biggest changes require that the masses should work together. As Marx put it, “theory becomes a material force as soon as it is gripped by the masses.”
Lastly, idealism does not just mean not knowing or having false beliefs.
Religion, Marx said, “is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world. It is the opium of the people.” We cannot avoid this duality when we talk about religion. It is both a political organization and a deep community feeling.
For many Christians, religion is about “correct belief” not right behavior. For them, their bible’s overriding appeal is the authority it proclaims, not the empathy it inspires. It is about meeting the believer’s quest for certainty, not an oppressed person’s need for compassion and justice. Its primary goal is personal salvation, not interpersonal solidarity, unless solidarity is only with those of like-minded belief.
Such religion is about obtaining immortality for one’s own soul, far more than demanding an end to exploitation and for morality in human relations. Many Christians use incorrect biblical belief to rationalise, justify, and accommodate immoral behavior towards those their bible has condemned as enslaveable or “unredeemable” and thus exploitable. Even Paul the apostle promoted this.
ICWP must refute this destructive ideology because it holds the working class back. We need, as communists, to create heaven on earth by ending exploitation, racism, sexism and poverty in our lifetime. We must fight this Christian belief that it is okay for workers to suffer in this life because in the “next” there won’t be any suffering.
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