I feel like I understand communist theory pretty well at a basic level, and I believe in it, but I just don’t see what part of it requires belief in an objective world of matter. I don’t believe in matter and I’m still a communist. And it seems that in the 21st century most people believe in materialism but not communism. What part of “people should have access to the stuff they need to live” requires believing that such stuff is real? After all, there are nonmaterial industries and they still need communism. Workers in the music industry are producing something that nearly everyone can agree only exists in our heads. And they’re still exploited by capital, despite musical instruments being relatively cheap these days, because capital owns the system of distribution networks and access to consumers that is the means of profitability for music. Spotify isn’t material, it’s a computer program. It’s information. It’s a thoughtform. Yet it’s still a means of production that ought to be seized for the liberation of the musician worker. What does materialism have to do with any of this?
I agree with this but I do want some clarification
The “altering behaviors” thing refers to changing your environment, right? Not changing your brain using sheer force of will/pulling yourself up by your bootstraps
I’m skeptical of the idea that people change their fundamental habits without external prompting. I’ve heard too many stories about morally upstanding people turning out to be total pieces of shit and experienced too many examples in my life of wanting to do the right thing but having to fight an uphill battle to do it
The way I am reading your words is not matching the way I am conceptualizing these things, so I will attempt to both clarify and respond to your question and statements.
When I say altering behaviors I mean changing the behaviors of humans. So you go to the diner on the corner every Monday for dinner. That’s a series of behaviors, both the “every Monday” series and the “go to the diner for dinner” aggregate of behaviors. These behaviors are rooted in beliefs. If you were to change your beliefs, your behaviors would change. For example, if you believed the diner was closed permanently your behaviors would change. If you believe the food was causing you intense distress, your behaviors would change. If you believed that making dinner on Mondays was more important to you than eating at the diner, your behavior would change.
So, beliefs have a causal linkage with behaviors. Therefore, if we wish to alter behaviors, we must alter beliefs.
Charitably, this would be a cognitive behavior. Uncharitably, this is impossible. You cannot change your physical brain through sheer force of will. However, there is evidence that you can change your physical brain through your behaviors, but your bodily behaviors and your cognitive behaviors. (CBT is an example). But what would cause you to attempt to change your brain through cognitive behaviors? Beliefs. Beliefs cause your behaviors, whether those beliefs are that a bus is hurtling towards you or your belief is that you can earn a profit from buying low and selling high.
Even that external prompting is mediated through sense experience to form beliefs. You can externally prompt someone all you want but unless they can form sense experience, organize that experience, and form beliefs about that experience your prompting will zero causal impact. Ultimately people change themselves in a causal linkage that involves their sense-making apparatus which formulates beliefs from their sensory experience. This is not to say that all we have to do is show people the truth and they will change. It is to say that if you wish to change the behaviors of others you must change the beliefs of others and if they don’t change their beliefs that’s on you for failing to figure out to create the change.
This is what propaganda is. Literally it propagates beliefs into the minds of other persons with the explicit goal of changing their behaviors.
Generally, this anecdote points to something we have observed pretty consistently - beliefs in the existence of morality are highly correlated with anti-social behavior and atrocities. Empirically we are seeing that the utility of morality is not social good but actually social ill - morality is invented by the ruling class to control the masses behaviors and to indoctrinate new members of the ruling class into the behaviors that maintain the status quo.
As for wanting to do the right thing but fighting an uphill battle to do it, welcome to the struggle. We’re all here trying to figure it out. It turns out the ruling class will never yield without the masses forcing them to. Now the challenge is creating the beliefs in the masses that will result in coordinated effort to bring force against the ruling class, sustain it, and build a new society.
Yeah, I think I communicated what I meant to say unclearly
What I am basically asking is if you are suggesting that human beings can change how they act by simply wanting to act differently or believing something else, without outside prompting. I do not think they can and I’ve never seen evidence to the contrary. If someone was told that eating lettuce is good but they didn’t know what lettuce was, how would they be able to act on it? There is at least one prerequisite for acting on beliefs- further knowledge.
This feels weirdly condescending? I am not complaining, I am sharing my lived experience- that being that believing in things is not, by themselves, enough to change my behaviors. I can believe that working towards revolution every day of my life is a proper and beneficial thing to do, but I rarely ever actually do it (likely because I have numerous mental disorders)
Apologies. I meant it as an embrace of solidarity instead of a knowing smirk. We all struggle to do the right things. The idea that beliefs are not enough to change behavior is, in part, a disagreement on what constitutes a belief. Believing that you will be happy or safe following an outcome is a belief that changes behavior. Believing you have more pressing problems that require attention is a belief that changes behavior. Adopting a net new belief is often not enough to change behavior. It takes time to incorporate that new belief into your system of beliefs and to change many other beliefs. Think of it this way - your behavior is caused by a network of millions of beliefs, so adding one more new belief is less than 0.001% of your internal causal network.
Of course, environment plays a huge part here in that if you believe you should always help dig holes when possible, but you never encounter a shovel in your life, well your behaviors are severely constrained. These are what are generally considered environmental conditions, but conditions en toto includes the beliefs of members of society. Often we find that propaganda is not sufficient, but it is in fact necessary. Likewise, environmental conditions are not sufficient but are necessary. The sum total of environmental and mental conditions are what we term the “material conditions”, because they are all material to the revolution, that is to say they all have causal effects on the revolutionary potential of a moment.
Can people change their beliefs without outside prompting? I understand where you’re coming from with this one, but it’s tough to answer because I don’t know you well enough. On the one hand, no, the liberal theory of individualism is garbage. On the otherhand, all prompting is external even if no other human is involved. For example, if I find that my beliefs lead to bad outcomes for me, I can choose to change my beliefs. A lot needs to be right for that to happen. I need to have beliefs about my beliefs, beliefs about the outcomes I experienced, beliefs about myself. But yes, I can change things about myself without someone else agitating me to do so, but yes there are preconditions, but no those preconditions are not universally external prompting by other people, but yes development of those preconditions is a function of society and therefore is dependent on other persons.
It’s hard to answer. The best I can say is I firmly reject the liberal framing of individualism but I do not believe individuals lack the power to change their own beliefs and behaviors. Reality is dialectical in this way.
This is what I disagree with. I cannot do that and many can’t. I think even the implication this is possible is a blatantly false suggestion implanted in people’s heads by years of liberalism and notions of Christian “free will”.
I am not the exception. I am the rule, made more obvious for everyone to see. Nobody has control over themselves and nobody can change themselves to be better. Self improvement is a myth. The only thing that can come close is incremental change of one’s surroundings, which can eventually change oneself.
The idea that we can change ourselves is a comfortable lie, told to make ourselves feel like the rational, superior beings we consider ourselves to be. But we are not. We have more understanding than most animals, yes, but our main difference is a marked increase in pattern finding. This does not imply an increased ability to change those patterns within our own brain, only an ability to understand patterns so our very small ability can be multiplied, our small pushes applied in just the right place to give the outcome we need.
We do not have bigger pushes than other animals, and make no mistake, we are all animals, we just have an easier time noticing where to put them
So we can “change ourselves”, but in the sense that humans can change other humans, and that we can influence our own thoughts in subtle but important ways. But that is entirely different from the classic notion of “self-improvement”, of “mind over matter”.
Important edit: to be clear, I don’t mean any of this in a hostile way. I guess i just say this as an opportunity to put my manifesto down