Fundamentals of Marx: Idealism vs. Materialism

In this episode of the Fundamentals of Marx series, we're going to briefly go over the difference between idealism and materialism. This distinction is important because it is frequently references by many of the early thinkers in the Marxist school of thought. Most of all, materialism is central to Marxist theory overall, so getting to know it's basic principles is worth our time!

[ghostfire]

"We are living in a material world and I am a material girl"
-Karl Marx

[joshuas.]

I spent so much time trying to understand this, thanks for making it so accessible.

[commwave]

materialism intensifies.
You should also do a explanation of historical materialism. Great video by the way.

[omniusmaximusgluteuslxix]

Like OMG, my brain is still in recovery mode from taking in so many high level important ideas!
Liberalism & fascism structurally incentivize putting feelings over facts!
Great vid TMP:)

[AllHaiLKINGTIsHeRe]

I've just discovered this channel and I just want to say that this is one of the best channels I've ever come across. These videos provide excellent explanation for things, both helping to reinforce things I already know, as well as to teach new concepts or to phrase them in a new way. This channel will be extremely useful for a lot of people if you guys keep it up. Perhaps creating some more generic videos with more generic titles (ie. basics of Marxism for beginners) or something might provide the views you need to grow. The video making quality as well as the content are already the cream of the crop :)

[breadtheory]

Great video! Loved how you explained materialism. Can't wait for the next video in the series!

[palatonian]

I am new to socialism, but this video and these ideas really hit hard for me. This might be a bit of a false parallel, but my whole childhood and most of my early adulthood was dominated by religious (idealistic?) abstractions completely divorced from the way my mind actually worked and the realities of my circumstances. I found freedom as I engaged with the world as I found it, rather than the way I was taught it "should be".

[leam]

the first time i heard of the idealism vs materialism was when a supposed fellow marxist was weaponizing the false choice to split me off from the community due to "idealist" interests. i appreciate this basic intro, which gives me language to understand what this person was doing at the time.

[redtsika]

what is great about DM is that it can be applied to analyze everything in your life, which makes it universal, but it's purest form is understanding change between and within things. great thing to learn to use if you're looking to change power dynamics in society.

[karigrandii]

Idealism, individualism, hedonism and an atomistic world view are the biggest problems of modern society.

[arthurwieczorek]

One minute into this video and I can see the need for Lee's Elucidation: A finite number of words must be made to represent an infinite number of things and possibilities.

[vaxrvaxr]

"There are natural leaders and natural followers" is actually a materialist argument, given that those are in large part attributed to genetics.

[KamikazethecatII]

Ideas reshape material conditions and material conditions shape ideas, neither is a primary driving force over the other then. If they are in a relationship where they directly affect and change each other then you have a historical idealism-materialism, not one or the other. You have a chain of ideal responses to material conditions and material conditions being changed by ideas going back all throughout human history.

[philippafhelmstrm]

Now I'm not very knowledgeable about Idealist philosophy, like that of Hegel Fichte or Schelling, but from what I believe to have gathered, Idealism is not at all related to 'Ideas' in the way we commonly use this term. It is more aligned with the conviction that Ideas (=Forms which structure our apprehension of the world) shape our access to the world in a systematic manner. And that to understand (our apprehension of) the world, we must first understand the Forms which make the world appear to us in the ways in which it does.
That the world is not an object independent of that subject perceiving it, but rather always an object in relation to a subject which cannot be negated from our perception of that object.

[Ara-woho]

So is it vulgar materialism to say that the ideas of people are only the consequence of material reality?

[Love-Eat-Live]

Great video. on 3:25 you mentioned that the fight ended quite while ago. Well, it would be great if you could do a breakdown of Dr. Joe Dispenza's findings and teachings. Science is starting to provide findings that idealism is real and that we should have a second look at things in a different way.

[tv-pp]

You could argue either side of the com/cap debate with both idealist or materialist views

[justinli]

I really like all the Marxist Leninist theories you put out, but it somewhat puts me in pain on how philosophy as a whole is characterized by this video and many Marxists. The materialist vs idealist divide is useful when you're criticizing political thoughts that are not built on historical material conditions, political thoughts that are driven by ideas in vacuums. But the way you framed how "science proves materialism" makes it sound like that the physicalist conception of mind is the consensus among those that study it, that noticing one's epistemological limit have anything to do with observing and applying scientific principles, that science itself isn't built in a useful vacuum (goodluck proving science without using scientific methods of proof). Philosophical problems are much more complicated than they appear, and philosophers of science are till this day working out how we can reason about uncertainties and causality, how we can understand the nature sensual experiencss we can't capture in their original form, whether science is steadily progressing or restarts with a more accurate but still imperfect model after each scientific revolution. What I'm trying to say is, I think marxists should know the limits of what they know in philosophy, that the abstract ideas of materialism and science didn't "complete" the development of philosophy outside of Marxism. I believe Marxists are better off leaving the philosophy outside of political and moral philosophy untempered, unless in situations where academic subjects are weaponized like what churches and Nazis did.

[patrickdelarosa]

You need to read Bernardo Kastrup to understand and separate metaphysical claims with social/political claims, is materialism that says the world out there is all in your head, that experience only arises in your brain and that is why the hard problem of consciousness is unsolved, I’m a marxist in the political spectrum but an idealist in the metaphysical.

[t.m.]

I'm a vulgar Materialist, but still a Marxist. I believe that my and anybody else's ideas are nothing more then electrochemical reactions within our respective brains, but these, very much so material reactions, of course still have the capacity to shape the matter around them.