It’s common here to criticize Great Man Theory, in that it’s not just one person that caused changes, it’s many. However, where I’m lost is where they further imply that things happening have absolutely nothing to do with individual choice, and material conditions are the only thing that matters. This really just sounds like predestination with extra steps, as in, your material conditions will choose whatever actions you take, which completely loses me.
The logical conclusion to this mindset is that organization and trying to do political action is pointless, after all, material conditions will either make it happen or not make it happen, which I don’t think anyone is trying to say.
A few things here:
- Great Man Theory is the statement that singular individuals shape history. You can believe that classes and groups can change history without believing individuals do. It is the recognition that one person cannot create change on their own, but that with enough comrades, they can change the world today.
- Material conditions are the road upon which we walk - they determine where the option to turn appears, but they are not our feet or minds. We choose whether to take the turn or continue on the road we walk.
- Most of the time, we are overdetermined, but that is why we organize - so in those rare moments when we are not overdetermined, we are prepared to act decisively.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Material conditions set the limits of the possible for what we can achieve and how we can think about what to achieve, but that doesn’t mean everything is predestined.
You’re not really missing anything: free will does not exist. However to get the outcomes we want we have to pretend that it does. just vibe
Material conditions narrow the field of possible outcomes, but there’s still some variation in the outcomes that are left. In some situations, that variation can have a big difference in the quality of life of people who have to live with the result, and people doing more than expected to organize can make a serious difference.
my understanding is that dialectics is the constant interaction of material conditions and the system that “choices” create. People often choose the path of least resistance that material conditions have lead to. On an individual level people can contradict the system but ultimately cannot change the path of least resistance and the actions of others without changing material conditions.
