Materialism or idealism?

I started to be more aware and rejection of historical materialism for idealism - namely: historical ethicism.

I don't think we can predict what's historically and deterministically necessary, we can try to determine what is ethically good. And this is the realization of the spirit of mutual aid, the fight on the side of the weak and oppressed against the power and violence, whoever they are. It's always choosing stronger enemies, not weaker than us.

And that's why I can't abandon struggling against all forms of oppression, or creating a hierarchy of validity. Of course, I do not mean looking for the oppressed in all classes and washig the class war in liberal idpol, I mean only that I will not sacrifice anyone on the altar of mass propaganda. Ethics are the most important, only later is effectiveness; without such an assumption, I would cease to be who I am, and my activity would be pointless.

You never understood dialectical materialism. It isn't about predicting everything under the sun, and just because some members of Holla Forums can be a touch too autistic, morals/ethics do actually exist.
Wait wtf I just realized you said historical materialism. You reject the Marxist theor of historical development?! How the fuck do you explain how scientific research often explodes after the development of tools like the microscope other than an increase in certain material items making it possible? Did they act ethically enough for microbes to reveal themselves??? Explain yourself at once.
People aren't ever who they used to be.
I like that you like people though, that's always nice.

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Not entirely. I believe that Marx was right in the fact that being determines consciousness and that historical processes are determined by economic conditions. But we can know it only when we look back in time. We can't predict in what historical moment we're now, if we're convinced that we can - we are deluding ourselves. Marx himself wrote about the spectre of communism that has circulated over Europe for 150 years and somehow has not come. This doesn't mean that it won't come, but we can't predict when.

Only true choice we have is not in support for the historical process that we think will lead us to communism, but support for what we consider the most ethically right at the moment.


Not, but we never predicted future development of science. We could only ethically choose to be good scientists striving for truth - fulfilling our moral duty as a scientists.
I strongly resonate with Kotarbinski ethics - a ethics of good work, because it looks me as inherently working class ethics. I perceive revolutionary work as being worker developing his work ethics and doing job better and better. Striving for moral perfection, as revolutionary and social organizer.

When I met once old comrade from the British Solidarity Federation, I was very impressed, I would like to be as good as he does in his work.

I literally seized at that doozy. Straight up flopped like a fish for a second.
No one has ever claimed this, excluding some edgy kids who know nothing. You are turned off by an effect that no one claimed it would have.
It isn't about following a historical process either, a most you can just develop things instead if destroy/regress them.
What is truly confusing is that your ethical beliefs don't predict anything either?! What is perhaps even FURTHER confounding is that your historical ethicism seemingly isn't in conflict with historical materialism at all?? You just seem to have (rightfully so), accepted that alongside purely material forces, man and his beliefs develop as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Holla Forums made it seem like materialism=ethics suxx, they really like the "no rulez" bad boy vibe, but are too tsundere to commit. Beyond the point tho.
To size up my post, it sounds like you are a materialist who recognizes the roles ideas have on human development, which is a 100% materialist notion.

Ok. Still I have some doubts that pure materialist approach would lead to attitude "always stand on the side of the winner". Ie. Marx argues, that petty bourgeois ideas are unworthy of attention because they are doomed to nonexistence to the decomposition of this class becasue of economic factors. I don't love petty bourgeois ideas, but I started to wonder, why if modern left (where I live) for example, rejects some philosophical intellectualism because it's "petty bourgeois", even if some of them are ethically good.

Political practice to win elections is for me something other than revolutionary activism, maybe both are needed. But the most important thing for me is to do everything I can to win of good idea, than being on the side of the idea that will win becasue political process.
Many anarchists, because of this understanding of materialism, went through the side of Bolsheviki. Soviet communists crushed the Hungarian uprising with such a spirit. So it's not just that the edgy children misinterpret Marx, there must be something deeper. :/

Bye bye baboons

No more bananas for baboons!

Moreover, I think I need to "always stand on the side of the weak" and being against strong and won. This requires us to develop constantly and struggle potenally lethal, but also heroic. It's more Nietzschean than materialist IMHO.

I suppose you are communist because it's "ethically" good too? That the world is not sunshine and rainbows because of the capitalist? Well I have news for you. It is SHITTY bourgeois moralism that ground your reasoning for rejecting materialism. Perhaps like said, you are merely acknowledging the effects that ideology has on society and that's all fine and good, but if your rejection of realpolitik is on the basis that you refuse to adjust with material conditions than I can only see a repeat of anarchist historical failiures. Perhaps I am misinterpreting your views massively. Correct me
if I am.

Google Bookchin. He does a great job of sublating Marx's materialism, as well as recovering a naturalistic ethics similar to Kropotkin

You've been taking memers and retards too seriously. Idealism is the concept of consiousness creating material reality with Materialism being the reverse, to summarize in a crude manner. You seem to accept the former, and acknowledging ideology as an outgrowth of material circumstance and its effects on society isn't idealistic.

I think being ethical is not bourgeois moralism. Bourgeois moralism is (at least I see it this way) moral admonition of others. Rejection of ethics is the privilege of non-working classes and the symptom of decadence. It's like teenager's rebellion, "I freeze my ears to make my mother angry". I think more about personal ethics to archieve self-improvement but not as productivity for the capitalist, which is anything but moral, but doing my progressive, revolutionary work well.

The working class is not amoral, it has its ethics. We don't cheat our comrades, we don't tolerate absentees and drones who drop their work on others. We love our children and families, we feel solidarity with friends, we don't report neighbors to the Police when they don't harm the community. It's a relatively conservative ethics but tolerant.

Whereas non-working classes are bored and are looking for a sneak peek: conflict where there is no necessarily conflict, a problem where it isn't. Working ethic is the spirit of collective action, pure communism in original meaning.

TBH for me Soviet Union was a failure, when anarchism was success. Because anarchism kept the moral values that Bolshevism had torn and erased forever.

maybe instead of looking for marxism to be an all-encompassing theory of everything, you could actually learn the discipline and draw on normative ethical theories to inform your day-to-day life

Are serious m8? There is no "ethics" in the class struggle. There is only the clash between two groups with diametrically opposed interests. This struggle will end when our enemies are dead and socialism is established. Do you think that revolution and all of the resulting instability it will create, the rapes that occur, the potential indiscrimnate killings, the starvation and disease, is ethical? Moralism is bourgeois in any form, because it stifles our revolutionary consciousness. It chains us to the standards for acceptable action that the bourgeoisie wish to uphold. A revolutionary should be able, to be WILLING to do anything and it is precisely the reason why anarchist attempts have been crushed in the past. Their dogmatic adherence to a "moralistic" view of the proletarian struggle meant that could not adapt.
THIS IDEOLOGICAL PURITY MEANS NOTHING IF POWER IS NOT SEIZED.
Anarchism's historical defeats have been SO FAST that they were never subject to the slow degradation the USSR suffered through bourgeois ideology. Being the case, suppose an anarchist project is confronted with such material conditions long enough where it must make a decision that risks their ideological purity? That risks bourgeois ideology? To take the easy way out means that you die nobly in your shit and blood and be satisfied with your failiure as your "ethics" are preserved. To adapt means that you risk everything including your ideological purity, but I'd rather be remembered for achieving socialism or not at all.

I can''t separate day-to-day life from revolutionary activity! It's immoral. ;)

Revolutionary activity is self-sacrifice for a higher purpose, not a hobby after work. It's inherently part of everyday activity and work or it is nothing.


Completely. I'm usually serious, being "unserious ironic hehe troll" is infantile and reactionary. True socialist revolution needs ethos, and through it also pathos.

I radically don't agree. It's first of all matter of ethics. We win in class struggle if we manage to be better than our oppressors, and by organizing the struggle and creating a culture of struggle, we prove our moral superiority, which obliterates the pretensions of the previous regime to reign.
Bolsheviki did something exactly the opposite: they proved their moral weakness and thus they legitimized the restauration of the old regime and its values. Their regime collapsed, with fall of leftist values as such.

This is one interpretation but for me this fight also has a moral dimension and one of these classes is right - working class.

You didn't read Marx carefully, then, even if I don't fully agree with him - Marx wrote that capital is problem, not people that represent capital. If all bourgeois/kulaks/spies and saboteurs/whatever will be dead, it basically change nothing, if we abolish capital they couldn't represent it as well. It's immoral to murder helpless, harmless people, and in Soviet Union this rhetoric was used only justify the moral vileness and dictatorship of the Bolsheviks. It had nothing to do with class struggle.

It's not, but it's also not revolution. If you want to induce starvation in name of the revolution, you have moral right only to starve yourself to death, not anyone else, especially not working class you claim the right to rule like animals in the slaughterhouse.

I don't want you to seize power so it's rather good, don't you think?

Lol @ the relativism in this thread. Ethics exist objectively, whether or not you acknowledge them.

Lmao simply trying to prove to people that we have "higher morals" is not good praxis if revolution is our goal which in itself is a destructive and amoral process. It is transformative perhaps, but there is no logic to it but its own. Political/military power and ideological hegemony will secure proletarian victory in light of a revolution and what you don't seem to understand is that there WILL BE innocent deaths as a result of our struggle no matter what we do. You seem to think that what I want is just murder willy-nilly and frankly that's a strawman resulting from missing the point completely. It is also why you conveniently ignore the
in my sentence
The question is not of how much dead and what not. It is a question about how far are willing to go?
The nature of the proletarian existance is one of ignorance and misery. That's why we wish to abolish it and transcend class as a whole. There is no "moral" component to the proletarian outlook on class struggle, but their material self-interest.


Do you deny the use of violence? Of coercion? Why do you have that flag then if not with the understanding that we will have to fight to win? I'll ask this question once again: suppose an anarchist project results in many violent and terrible deaths. Some are even perpretrated by our comrades.
DO YOU GIVE UP? DO YOU DROP YOUR ARMS AND SURRENDER BECAUSE OF YOUR MORALS? IS THE CAUSE NOW NOT WORTH FIGHTING FOR?
If not than you are a hypocrite. You think this fight is a duel, but it is a knife fight in an alleyway.

It is if your post-revolutionary order last more than 100 years. Also, is new world it isn't supposed to be better than the old one, so why would you have anything to do to aim for it?

There won't because you'll lead no struggle at all. How old are you BTW?

It didn't secured any regime in the past, but it'll secure your regime. Cool story bro.

Not even one.

I don't surrender, just don't want to fight your stupid war for a parsley (which will not happen anyway if you have such agitators)

Well it is better for me.

THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.

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Whatsoever, this thread…

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Morals are subjective but that doesn't mean we all get to act like assholes.

And where do these supposedly objective ethics come from?

Never before have I been so interested in the book man, not a single shitposter has made me as interested as this one.
Where does the objective world come from? An argument from ignorance isn't an argument, however I am interested in what he believes ethics come from. I personally believe they develop like productive forces, organisms, etc…

Except that's exactly what that means you twat.