Introduction to Materialism
A simple introduction to dialectical and historical materialism & their relevance to youth oppression.
When we talk about materialism in the US, we're usually talking about the mindset of hoarding, whether money or consumer products. The common understanding of materialism pretty much comes down to the worship of things, especially when it overpowers spirituality.
But there's another, very different definition of materialism. That's the one I'm more interested in. Today I'll go over what the often-ignored definition of materialism is, including two types that are important to antiparent.
Table of Contents
What is materialism?
But first: Idealism
To understand materialism, it's best to first understand the opposite of it: idealism. Idealism is the concept that human mental constructs are the main forces that define and shape reality. Mental constructs are things that exist only in the mind (like ideas, spirituality, creativity, reasoning, and motivation). A common way to break down different types of idealism is by categorizing them into two types:
- Matter - everything that has mass and takes up space - doesn't exist or isn't important. Mental constructs are the foundation of all reality (or make up reality entirely). This is called metaphysical idealism or ontological idealism.
- Matter exists, but we can't ever truly or fully know anything about it, because our understanding of it always depends on our mental constructs. This is called epistemological idealism.
Most of the popular ways people think about political, legal, economic, and social life in the US are idealist. This goes for almost any ideology. Such as:
- The US is the land of the free. We live in a meritocracy where the people who live comfortable lives earned them through hard work.
- When someone breaks a law, we will bring them to justice.
- Poor people are poor because they're lazy.
- Good people (depending on your view: devout religious people, heterosexuals, sober people, legal immigrants, etc.) in our society have good moral character. Evil people (depending on your view: LGBT people, people who use drugs, white supremacists, abusers, etc.) have bad moral character.
- Politics is when people debate ideas of how to run our society, and policies pass when they're the best option and convince the most people. If political parties and officials win any other way, that's cheating, which is unfair.
- Racism is when people think or say bad things about people of color. Any structural racism happens because the people in power believe bad things.
- Fascism, sexism, racism, or other social issues can be defeated through the power of love and understanding. If people only tried to get to know each other better, these issues wouldn't exist anymore.
In all of these examples, people's (or society's) ideals and beliefs are considered the driving force of all aspects of life and reality.
OK, really, what is materialism?
Materialism is the view that:
- Matter (again, anything that has mass and takes up space) exists. All of matter together makes up the material world.
- Alternative, older definition: matter is anything that we can perceive with our senses.
- Matter, not the mind, is the main basis of reality. Matter exists independently of the mind. It has traits that are not changed by how people perceive it - they makes up its material condition.
- We can understand matter by observing things about it, including how it interacts with other matter. Our understanding of matter, especially as it improves over time, accurately represents how matter exists.
- Our thoughts, ideas, and other mental constructs are affected by material conditions. These mental constructs do not change material conditions.
In a similar way to how we use:
- Ecology to understand flows of nutrients through ecosystems
- Biochemistry to understand how plants can transform light energy into chemical energy
- Physics to understand the structure of atoms and the way they interact with each other
we can use the frameworks of dialectical materialism & historical materialism to understand the existence of and interactions between human economic, political, legal, and social systems.[1]
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Dialectics
The simplest description of dialectics I've ever seen was from this wonderful site:
Dialectics is a tool to understand the way things are and the way things change. Understanding dialectics is as easy as 1 - 2 - 3.
One: Every thing (every object and every process) is made of opposing forces/opposing sides.
Two: Gradual changes lead to turning points, where one opposite overcomes the other.
Three: Change moves in spirals, not circles.
How are dialectics applied in materialism?
Dialectics in materialism help us understand contradictions: when the two opposing sides (from rule 1) have different goals they're working towards.
In economics, dialectics helps us see that the owning class and working class have different goals. The owning class is all the people who own the materials and resources needed to produce things to sell on the market. The working class is all the people who depend on a fixed paycheck from the owner of a company to survive. These two groups of people have different interests:
- The workers want to get paid at least a living wage, but ideally the full value of what they produce through their work.
- The owning class want to maximize the profit they get from selling stuff on the market. Most simply, profit = money coming in - money being spent. So to maximize profit, they need to either increase the money coming in or decrease the money being spent (or both). Paying workers tends to be one of the most expensive parts of running a business, so it's in an owner's interest to cut wages whenever they can.
So the working class want better wages, better working conditions, better living conditions, and so on. The owning class, meanwhile, want to cut wages and other expenses as much as possible so they can pocket more money themselves. The workers aren't very powerful individually, but when they organize and act as a group, they can force the owner to give them what they want.
Dialectics is what helps us understand this dynamic better. The owner isn't going to give the workers everything they want if they just ask nicely (and nothing else). The workers need power and leverage in order to shift the balance, and they build those slowly over time, not overnight. (See rule 2.)
Both sides push and pull at each other (this is called class struggle), and often fall into similar patterns over time. (For example, the workers achieve their demands of better conditions, but then over time get used to them and forget why they needed to organize as a group in the first place. Then, once they lose their power as a group, the owners push to cut their expenses again.)
Historical Materialism
But rule 3 says change moves in spirals, not circles. Even as two opposing groups push and pull back and forth at each other, the environment around them changes over time because of their actions. Think of climate change and the development of technology - how different the world is today than it was even 100 years ago. These changes mean that the nature of the conflict changes (often very dramatically) over time.
Historical materialism simply means to analyze how these changes occur over time. Different societies in different time periods will have different material conditions that affect the nature of class struggle. As workers (or as antifascists, antiracists, feminists, etc.), we can't try to organize today using exactly the same techniques that worked in France in the 1800s, or the Soviet Union in the 1900s, or the USA in the 1960s-70s. But if we learn as much as we can about the historical context of each situation, we can see what went right and what went wrong. That kind of information is really important to have if we want our activism to be effective.
Right now, in the US, we're in a really bad spot. Between the destruction of organized labor, decades of anticommunist propaganda, and the lack of coordination between activist movements, the working class is getting absolutely crushed - especially the people who suffer multiple kinds of oppression. Because idealism is much more common here than materialism, a lot of people don't even know where to start to understand what's going on, much less fight back. The contradictions within the working class (racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, etc.) make it even harder to figure out how to build power together.
But dialectical and historical materialism help a lot. When we use them to describe and analyze our experiences, it gives us a clearer view of the way reality actually works. It's the first step of many towards figuring out how to win.
So is idealism bad?
Is materialism good?
No. Actually, good and bad are moral ideas - in other words, mental constructs. Good and bad don't exist in the physical world. They're judgments we make.
Using materialism, we can say that when we put dialectical materialism into practice, it can help improve the material conditions of the working class (or other classes) in specific ways. But to say that materialism is good and idealism is bad, or vice versa, is an statement of opinion.
Personally, I think both frameworks can be useful and powerful in different ways. I'm an idealist in many ways:
- I believe everyone deserves to have their survival needs met.
- I believe that love and kindness make people's lives better.
- I believe in treating others with respect as equals in personal interactions.
- I believe that uncritical obedience to systems of domination is bad.
These ideals guide the way I move (or at least try to move) through the world. I think that most people have ideals they value. Ultimately, when we're trying to build a vision of how the world should be, our understanding of that will always depend to some extent on the ideals we value.
But when we're trying to build that better world, idealism without materialism doesn't help us. We need to have a solid understanding of the structures of reality and know how to reliably change them the way we want to. We need dialectical and historical materialism to understand why voting in US elections or calling our representatives will never truly fix racism, transphobia, sexism, ableism, ageism, or other oppressions. We need materialism to help us figure out more effective types of political action.
How is this relevant to kids?
Children aren't workers, right?
Plenty of children are workers, with plenty more states rolling back protections. Many existing child labor protections are waived if the child's employer is also their parent. Children are workers whether or not we want to acknowledge that reality.
Beyond that, children of the working class are part of the working class. They still spent a massive portion of their time learning how to become part of the labor force. That in itself is labor for the ultimate benefit of the owning class, and unpaid labor at that.
chorui halim
Children are subject to the same currents of class struggle (and other struggles) as their adult counterparts. The difference is that they have next to no autonomy compared to adults. Children face the additional contradiction of age-based oppression from adults in general, but especially from their parents.
Dialectical and historical materialism are crucial for understanding:
- How childhood developed through the ages in various societies
- What children's material conditions are in various societies today
- What economic (and by extension political, legal, social) trends affect the material conditions children face
- What we can do to support children's liberation within the broader struggle against all oppression
and these frameworks are the basis for all the work I do for antiparent.
Footnotes
If you get annoyed at references to dialectical materialism as a "science" when it is neither replicable (conducting experiments can be conducted again in exactly the same way) nor falsifiable (coming up with a hypothesis that can be proven false through experiment), know that you're not alone. It bothers me too.
But this deductivist definition of science was introduced in 1934 by Karl Popper. Before that, the observationalist-inductivist method (observing natural phenomena and creating theories based on those observations) was the main scientific tradition. Marx and Engels developed the main ideas of dialectical materialism in the late 1800s, well before this change happened.
And, well, we still call computer science, political science, astronomy, and quantum mechanics "science." Are they?
Resources
Dialectics for Kids - an incredible resource!
Other
E.E. Martz
