Camboozie [he/him]
I would highly recommend the book Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer which you can find for free on the Foreign Languages Press website under foundations. It is an introduction written for a general audience that will give you a solid base from which to approach other philosophical texts. I’d also really recommend getting a solid grasp of dialectical and historical materialism before trying to dive into other philosophies. Marx laid out the foundations of a scientific approach to understanding the world in all of its aspects. If you understand how to analyze things through a Marxist lens you will be able to cut through a lot of bourgeoise, metaphysical, idealist etc. philosophy which is interesting historically but otherwise useless, or even harmful, if used as a basis for practice.
He says in the beginning that in building the USSR Stalin shouldn’t be idolized or mystified as a great man but then proceeds to lay the post-war failures directly at his feet. If he really thinks that the communist party became bourgeoise because they didn’t want “real jobs” then that is an implicit statement that the vangaurd party is always doomed to fail to lead the dictatorship of the proletariat.
I don’t want to get into the habit of psychoanalyzing people but, if we accept that history is as much a reflection of the present as a record of the past, I’d say that alternative histories such as this are more a reflection of their author than the material conditions at the time. Matt is bourg-ified and doesn’t want to work a “real job” and is projecting his anxieties about his own material conditions onto a totally different circumstance.
Do you have any sources on the cultural revolution and the renunciation of GR? I remember reading that in the Three Body Problem but honestly just assumed it was mostly BS. I can see how having a poor understanding of DM could lead to an idealist view in which dogmatic adherence to DM places it before scientific knowledge/understanding of matter. I don’t think I fully understand how GR is incompatible with DM but I also got a D in that class lol
I don’t mean to imply that somehow dialectical materialism will find a theory of everything. What I am wondering is how, if at all, does our current understanding of nature modify our understanding of dialectical materialism. Both QM/QED and GR are highly predictive theories and we have been able to use the models (however inaccurate) to make material advances in scientific knowledge. Saying that they are in disagreement and so tell us nothing about dialectical materialism seems idk lazy? Like Newtonian mechanics also has its limitations but the advances made there did relate to the conception of materialism at the time. Materialist philosophers decomposed everything into series of machines that produced motion but were essentially static in nature since their motion would eventually circle back and produce the same result. At that time the concept of matter and energy were separate but now we know that they are fundamentally inseparable from each other, and we have harnessed this knowledge to devastating result.
I guess my time frame should have been extended more than 50 years, but basically from my view “modern” physics requires a modern evaluation of dialectical materialism. From Engels Feuerbach “With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it [materialism] has to change its form…” So then the question is whether advances in QED and GR are “epoch-making” or is dialectical materialism stalled in the early 20th century?
Thanks for the recommendations! I have not read any of those works actually, I am very new to philosophical studies having read the work mentioned above, Stalin’s dialectical and historical materialism, and a mishmash of other things mostly related to the climate or politics. I have a degree in chemistry and physics though which is why I was thinking about these things. The philosophy of science is sorely lacking in university level science programs, but I doubt they would handle them well anyways.
From my understanding dialectical materialism has to be subordinated to our understanding of science. The two are linked and develop together. In the 18th century materialism was mechanical, and therefore metaphysical, because the science of mechanics was our most powerful predictive tool. This created problems in philosophy with people like Descartes theorizing that animals (and humans by extension) were basically just an amalgamation of simple machines.
A materialist point of view requires that philosophy be subordinated to our understanding of the nature of matter, energy, and motion since it is from these understandings that we shape our societies, or at least lay the foundation.
Based on what I’ve read dialectical materialism is more a philosophy of understanding the world. Materialism is the belief that matter exists independent of thought and that we can know the world as it is and not just as sense impressions. Dialectics is the acknowledgement that all matter and energy is in constant motion and transformative processes. They extend beyond the realm of the political thought, but I do agree that Marxism is mainly interested in how the method is applied to society.
I guess my question is not about how can we use dialectical materialism to interpret elementary particles/forces but the opposite. How does our understanding of these systems change our understanding of dialectical materialism? Maybe it doesn’t but the most recent discussion of it I had found before posting this was Lenin’s empirio-criticism and he was talking about the ether lol
No worries comrade I didn’t see it as lashing out! I also want to make it clear that I’m not trying to convert you or anything haha you just seem genuinely curious about the practice and I wanted to try and clarify a few points/share some of my own experiences. If you think that this is something that you want to pursue more I’d highly recommend trying to find a meditation center near you. They are usually run by lay practitioners and the dharma talks should be free. Learning from more experienced people can help you overcome some of the common roadblocks that we all face and even if you don’t really like it you might make a new friend. I met my partner of 2 years at a meditation center and she has been the best thing to happen in my life!
