Why do you need to wait for material conditions ``to be right´´ before you can have a revolution...

Why do you need to wait for material conditions ``to be right´´ before you can have a revolution? Can't you just break away from the conditions in existence? I've been thinking about it lately, and M-Ls might be correct in a metaphysical sense.

Can someone who's more well read expound on this particular issue?

read marx

I've read almost everything that Marx has written, except for Capital, of which I have read a few chaptets of. However, merely throwing "reaf X" at me doesn't really answer my question at hand.

Excuse the typos.

The material conditions "being right" includes the presence of a population willing to act to better their conditions and an opening for that action to have any leverage.

Yeah that is not an answer youre going to get from Marx, not directly anyway, because his earlier more humanist works are the most concerned with logistics of revolution whereas his later attempts at truly consistent materialist economics doesnt give you a lot of insight there

That said, a genuine question of mine for well read Marxists: what role does "class consciousness" play, if any, in Marxism? It seems supremely Idealistic to me to say that the "way forward" is to help/wait for/force the proletariat to rationally understand the flaws of capitalism and then have them dismantle it in pursuit of their consciousness of a socialist ideal.

Im not a strict materialist so this criticism doesnt determine whether or not I disown communism obviously, but it seems like a big contradiction.

...

look at how almost every socialist society needs to have some huge nationalist wave, industrializes well for about a decade, then has to start privatizing everything progressively to survive

pro tip: Autonomy is the best revolution, stop thinking only in ML ways

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE "RIGHT CONDITIONS" FOR A REVOLUTION, ==READ LENIN 2017==
t. Zizek Gang

Bump.

What did he mean by this?

Stop shilling your utopia children's fairytail world

The material condition have been right for half a century now.

ebin argument

I speak of ``ripe material conditions´´ in the same manner Leftcoms do, i.e, a time of a large section of class-conscious proletariats. I've been drifting away from this kind of thought lately, as I think it really takes time for the superstructure to shape accordingly to the new society.


I've been thinking that you need hierarchies with the vanguard to uphold the new mode of production and time for the superstructure to adapt. I don't think anarchism is feasible in defending itself, as cliché of a tankie argument as it sounds.

I'm just rambling random thoughts at this point, sorry if I come across as a brainlet.

Okay dude

What are you trying to infer here?

Material conditions is sort of real concept. Think of the network of intercourse that creates a good citizen, would I be mistaken in thinking that the conditions for revolution (massive dissent, unsatisfied with daily life etc) would be different than the conditions that lead to a groomed populace?

I'm not 100% sure what is exactly meant by material conditions (whether only technical progress/the capacity of the economy is meant or other things like the development of power structures) so I'd be happy if someone could clarify the terminology since I've heard a few different definitions but anyway, certain factors in society help the proletariat to gain class consciousness e.g. relatively free exchange of information (the internet), increasing tensions between capitalist and worker, instability of the economy itself, … . However, the largest chunk of these conditions are met by our economy, despite that the most important factor still stands in the way of actual progress, our cultural apparatus which from entertainment to news is controlled by capital. It is not only an entity that on its own is detrimental to progress but it also disarms already potentially radicalizing entities. I think that reading the first ~40 pages (the propaganda model) of manufacturing consent by Chomsky and Herman and the chapter the culture Industry from Dialectics of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno should give you insight into how ideology sustains itself in a capitalist society. I'd read Chomsky/Herman first though. He is much more accessible since he explains very clearly the underlying economic mechanisms behind the production of ideology while Horkheimer/Adorno is more concerned with how ideology affects the consumer and the product itself.

Google historical materialism.

*He is much more accessible since he explains very clearly the underlying economic mechanisms behind the production of news (ideology)