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Marxism and Spiritualism

atanu

Member
Premium Member
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
—Karl Marx, introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Marxism has conventionally found itself on the side of “materialism.” There has also been a hyper-separation, as against the overdetermination of “matter” and “spirit,” in much of Marxian thought and praxis. Scholars discussed this issue thread bare in a special issue of Rethinking Marxism.
http://rethinkingmarxism.org/editor-intro/28-3-4-intro.html

One of the aims of this issue is to explore why and how this separation happened and how Marxism historically found itself to be heavily tilted toward materialism while the mutual constitutivity of matter and spirit was relegated to the background. The authors have brought some of Foucault's insights regarding philosophy and spirituality to bear on Marxism in this special issue.

Why does a dialogue between Marxism and spirituality matter for Marxism? For one, almost all the essays in this issue are troubled by absence of the question of the ‘subject-self’ in Marxism and suggest a need to seek new ground for its connection with social and political transformation. The interrogation of self and of self-transformation unlocks a trail of questions allowing authors to address most critical hitherto uncomfortable moments within Marxism. The authors refer to the inflexion point at which Marxism—a supposed theory of emancipation—becomes a system of oppression and violence.

All the essays, draw attention to the need for self-refection in Marxism and address the question of self and self-transformation as an essential condition for endogenizing the vexed problems of modes of oppression and violence that continue to persist in “socialist” systems and in communist subjects.

The authors in the volume, however, do not question the ‘materialism’ world view presumed default by Marx and his followers, At the time of Marx-Engels this was the most likely route. But science has changed a lot. My purpose in this post is to briefly outline the recent works in physics that question the dominant ‘materialism-realism’ world view.
.................................
Physicalists-materialists-philosophical naturalists hold that objective reality, often shortened to 'reality', is the world external to the self, also called nature, also called the realm of the physical sciences. Things and beings that exist as such in nature are real.

Some scientists and philosophers have countered the materialists with the following questions and data.

1. What could be more real than the awareness within which all objective reality is experienced?
2. If we assume that all that we know is mediated by the electrochemical mechanism in brain, then we can never know the actual world out there. There is something out there and the brain shows you some pixelated 3D model. How do we ever know what is out there?
3. Quantum Mechanics has shown us that so-called measurements are all contextual. I cite below five papers published in Nature, with links to full papers, that indicate that the so-called realism is not tenable.

a) The Mental Universe https://www.nature.com/articles/436029a
The author says "The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things."
In other words, the author points to the fact that the universe is our observation, but we forget the observation part and ascribe primacy to the 'observed'.

b) An experimental test of non-local realism | Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05677
The authors conclude that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.
In other words, the authors indicate that 'locality' and 'realism', the two axioms of Physicalsitic worldview, are untenable in light of results of their experiments.

c) Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system | Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10119
The authors conclude "Our results illustrate a deep incompatibility between quantum mechanics and classical physics that cannot in any way result from entanglement."
Physicalists usually explain away the startling results of quantum mechanics by resorting to entanglement. This paper indicates that no non-contextual theory can be tenable -- there can be no a priori truth apart from the observation. All quantum theories are contextual and we surely constitute the most important context.

d) https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3343.pdf?proof=true
Manning et al., conclude "Our experiment confirms Bohr’s view that it does not make sense to ascribe the wave or particle behaviour to a massive particle before the measurement takes place."
Wheeler’s supposition that a choice affects the ‘past history’ (of the photon) has been shown to be correct in past experiments using photon paths. In this paper, authors re-demonstrate with slow-moving massive helium atom what was already known for massless fast-moving photons that a future event (the method of detection) causes the photon (or the helium atom) to decide its past.

e) Quantum erasure with causally disconnected choice https://www.pnas.org/content/110/4/1221
The paper recommends abandoning the ‘Realism’ worldview altogether, as no realistic picture is compatible with its results which hinge causally on disconnected choice.
...
I AM A MARXIST WHO HAS HOWEVER DISCARDED THE MATERIALISTIC-REALISM WORLDVIEW. I will reiterate that Marxism needs to question its foundational worldview.
 

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I AM A MARXIST WHO HAS HOWEVER DISCARDED THE MATERIALISTIC-REALISM WORLDVIEW. I will reiterate that Marxism needs to question its foundational worldview.​

Whilst I appreciate you have taken the time to look in to this (it is quite an obscure but very interesting part of Marxist philosophy) there are serious issues with all of your suggestions. You are probably coming at this question from the standpoint of looking at the physics current in western science, rather than an understanding of Marxist philosophy. Marxism has a completely different conception of science which puts it at odds with western "capitalist" science. It's very much like the battles between Galileo and the Catholic Church over geocentric and heliocentric conceptions of the universe (feel free to assume you are Gallileo and I am the Catholic inquisition/KGB policing "thought crime" if you wish. It's a role I can play well. ;) ).

Marxism is highly problematic on physics this because it isn't clear where "legitimate" scientific debate ends and "illegitimate" attacks on Marxist philosophy begin. The only rule of thumb for handling these problems is "if it's materialist, it's Marxist". Remove that and the entire edifice collapses.

The concept of "the mental universe" is so far removed from Marxism that it belongs to a different (and opposing) philosophical school entirely. Marxism as the "materialist conception of history", is as described: a "materialist" conception of history. I would suggest you may wish to read further and deeper on the history of Marxist controversies surrounding physics before reaching conclusions on this.

V.I.Lenin addressed many of these claims in "materialism and empiro-criticism" (published in 1908 I think). It should be available on the Marxists internet archive (though Lenin's writing style leaves a lot to be desired). He categorically rejected claims of the "disappearance of matter" as a criticism of materialist philosophy based on treating matter as convertible to energy. Consequently he re-defined matter, not in terms of a particular structure of matter (such as atomic or subatomic particles) but merely as objective reality independent of the subject.

following on from Lenin's philosophical work that Soviet Union continued to uphold materialism and determinism in scientific enquiry. Quantum mechanics was a particular area of controversy. Many scientists being purged, sent to the gulag and executed in the Stalin era for asserting "indeterminist" views labeled as "physical idealism" to give you a sense of how seriously it was taken. This criticism of indeterminists theories of quantum mechanics continued after Stalin because determinism is an ESSENTIAL quality of Marxism as an understanding of the laws of nature, society and history as You cannot have "laws" of nature or history without determinism.

***

For those (very fortunate) souls not initiated in Marxism, the reason this was so controversial in Communist countries was that the legitimacy of their entire political system hinged on claiming Marxism was a science. Having physicists throw scientific objections to Marxism was a major threat to the political legitimacy and ideological coherence of the Marxist worldview. it implied that Marxism wasn't scientific and hence, the rule of the communist party wasn't the necessary consequence of historical laws.

[edit: the reason Soviet physicists got away with discussing these issues at all (at least after Stalin died and couldn't kill them anymore) was because the Soviets wanted bigger and better nuclear weapons. Hence they left physicists alone to do their jobs, up to a point. Otherwise the discussions wouldn't have happened at all, which is what happened with the criminalisation of genetics as a "fascist pseudo-science", that greatly set back Soviet biology for decades whilst they defend Lysenko's Neo-Lemarkian views on inheritance.]

Given the cannonal status of Lenin's "materialism and empire-criticism" and Engels "socialism: utopian and scientific", challenging materialism and determinism is the equivalent of saying to Christian fundamentalists "the bible is wrong" and "Jesus was just some random dude in sandals, not the son of God receiving epoch-making revelations".

In that sense, it is very much like Galileo and the Catholic Church because it comes down to who gets to decide the nature of truth: the church/communist party or the individual, whether they be a scientist or not.

***

For more information:

See "Philosophical Problems in Physical Science" with authors Herbert Horz, Hans Dieter Poltz, etc, edited by Erwin Marquit (1980) for a deeper discussion on Marxist approaches to Physics. It's an East German physics textbook translated in to English.

I might also suggest "Einstein and Soviet ideology" by Alexander Vucinich (2001) as a survey of the soviet interpretations of physics, relativity and quantum mechanics from its beginning to its collapse in 1991.

For a much more heavy and dense approach, you can look up "Einstien and the philosophical problems of 20th century physics" (1983), translated by Sergei syrovatkin. It's an English translation of a soviet textbook by progress publishers, the soviet's English language publishing company.
 
Last edited:

atanu

Member
Premium Member
Whilst I appreciate you have taken the time to look in to this (it is quite an obscure but very interesting part of Marxist philosophy) there are serious issues with all of your suggestions. You are probably coming at this question from the standpoint of looking at the physics current in western science, rather than an understanding of Marxist philosophy. Marxism has a completely different conception of science which puts it at odds with western "capitalist" science. It's very much like the battles between Galileo and the Catholic Church over geocentric and heliocentric conceptions of the universe (feel free to assume you are Gallileo and I am the Catholic inquisition/KGB policing "thought crime" if you wish. It's a role I can play well. ;) ).

Marxism is highly problematic on physics this because it isn't clear where "legitimate" scientific debate ends and "illegitimate" attacks on Marxist philosophy begin. The only rule of thumb for handling these problems is "if it's materialist, it's Marxist". Remove that and the entire edifice collapses.

The concept of "the mental universe" is so far removed from Marxism that it belongs to a different (and opposing) philosophical school entirely. Marxism as the "materialist conception of history", is as described: a "materialist" conception of history. I would suggest you may wish to read further and deeper on the history of Marxist controversies surrounding physics before reaching conclusions on this.

V.I.Lenin addressed many of these claims in "materialism and empiro-criticism" (published in 1908 I think). It should be available on the Marxists internet archive (though Lenin's writing style leaves a lot to be desired). He categorically rejected claims of the "disappearance of matter" as a criticism of materialist philosophy based on treating matter as convertible to energy. Consequently he re-defined matter, not in terms of a particular structure of matter (such as atomic or subatomic particles) but merely as objective reality independent of the subject.

following on from Lenin's philosophical work that Soviet Union continued to uphold materialism and determinism in scientific enquiry. Quantum mechanics was a particular area of controversy. Many scientists being purged, sent to the gulag and executed in the Stalin era for asserting "indeterminist" views labeled as "physical idealism" to give you a sense of how seriously it was taken. This criticism of indeterminists theories of quantum mechanics continued after Stalin because determinism is an ESSENTIAL quality of Marxism as an understanding of the laws of nature, society and history as You cannot have "laws" of nature or history without determinism.

***

For those (very fortunate) souls not initiated in Marxism, the reason this was so controversial in Communist countries was that the legitimacy of their entire political system hinged on claiming Marxism was a science. Having physicists throw scientific objections to Marxism was a major threat to the political legitimacy and ideological coherence of the Marxist worldview. it implied that Marxism wasn't scientific and hence, the rule of the communist party wasn't the necessary consequence of historical laws.

Given the cannonal status of Lenin's "materialism and empire-criticism" and Engels "socialism: utopian and scientific", challenging materialism and determinism is the equivalent of saying to Christian fundamentalists "the bible is wrong" and "Jesus was just some random dude in sandals, not the son of God receiving epoch-making revelations".

In that sense, it is very much like Galileo and the Catholic Church because it comes down to who gets to decide the nature of truth: the church/communist party or the individual, whether they be a scientist or not.

***

For more information:

See "Philosophical Problems in Physical Science" with authors Herbert Horz, Hans Dieter Poltz, etc, edited by Erwin Marquit (1980) for a deeper discussion on Marxist approaches to Physics. It's an East German physics textbook translated in to English.

I might also suggest "Einstein and Soviet ideology" by Alexander Vucinich (2001) as a survey of the soviet interpretations of physics, relativity and quantum mechanics from its beginning to its collapse in 1991.

For a much more heavy and dense approach, you can look up "Einstien and the philosophical problems of 20th century physics" (1983), translated by Sergei syrovatkin. It's an English translation of a soviet textbook by progress publishers, the soviet's English language publishing company.

I have two points. First is there is no physics in these scholarly articles. I will suggest that you should at least read the introduction.

Rethinking Marxism

Second. I strongly differ that Marxism teaches a stagnant view. The meaning of ‘dialectical’ incorporates three view thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Like the social scientists that I have referred to above (who are all devoted Marxists), I too believe that a rethinking is required.

...
 

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I have two points. First is there is no physics in these scholarly articles. I will suggest that you should at least read the introduction.

Rethinking Marxism

Second. I strongly differ that Marxism teaches a stagnant view. The meaning of ‘dialectical’ incorporates three view thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Like the social scientists that I have referred to above (who are all devoted Marxists), I too believe that a rethinking is required.

...

Speaking as someone still wrestling with the consequences of going “too far” down the path of Marxism, all I would suggest is “be careful what you wish for”.

The worst part of Marxism is how it appeals to our best inclinations and yet, somehow, gets us to become the worst version of ourselves. Having tried to go for “rethinking” Marxism in the past to make it more humane, all I feel now is the sense I am just another casualty in the decades of repeated efforts to do precisely that. I have ended up exactly where I never set out to be: as a Marxist-Leninist and borderline “Stalinist” who imperceptibly accepted one part of the ideology and then another over time.

Having been deeply hurt by realising too late what I got myself in to as a Communist, I don’t want someone else to go through the same experience. I hope you understand that is kindly meant and not a personal criticism. :)
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
—Karl Marx, introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Marxism has conventionally found itself on the side of “materialism.” There has also been a hyper-separation, as against the overdetermination of “matter” and “spirit,” in much of Marxian thought and praxis. Scholars discussed this issue thread bare in a special issue of Rethinking Marxism.
http://rethinkingmarxism.org/editor-intro/28-3-4-intro.html

One of the aims of this issue is to explore why and how this separation happened and how Marxism historically found itself to be heavily tilted toward materialism while the mutual constitutivity of matter and spirit was relegated to the background. The authors have brought some of Foucault's insights regarding philosophy and spirituality to bear on Marxism in this special issue.

Why does a dialogue between Marxism and spirituality matter for Marxism? For one, almost all the essays in this issue are troubled by absence of the question of the ‘subject-self’ in Marxism and suggest a need to seek new ground for its connection with social and political transformation. The interrogation of self and of self-transformation unlocks a trail of questions allowing authors to address most critical hitherto uncomfortable moments within Marxism. The authors refer to the inflexion point at which Marxism—a supposed theory of emancipation—becomes a system of oppression and violence.

All the essays, draw attention to the need for self-refection in Marxism and address the question of self and self-transformation as an essential condition for endogenizing the vexed problems of modes of oppression and violence that continue to persist in “socialist” systems and in communist subjects.

The authors in the volume, however, do not question the ‘materialism’ world view presumed default by Marx and his followers, At the time of Marx-Engels this was the most likely route. But science has changed a lot. My purpose in this post is to briefly outline the recent works in physics that question the dominant ‘materialism-realism’ world view.
.................................
Physicalists-materialists-philosophical naturalists hold that objective reality, often shortened to 'reality', is the world external to the self, also called nature, also called the realm of the physical sciences. Things and beings that exist as such in nature are real.

Some scientists and philosophers have countered the materialists with the following questions and data.

1. What could be more real than the awareness within which all objective reality is experienced?
2. If we assume that all that we know is mediated by the electrochemical mechanism in brain, then we can never know the actual world out there. There is something out there and the brain shows you some pixelated 3D model. How do we ever know what is out there?
3. Quantum Mechanics has shown us that so-called measurements are all contextual. I cite below five papers published in Nature, with links to full papers, that indicate that the so-called realism is not tenable.

a) The Mental Universe https://www.nature.com/articles/436029a
The author says "The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things."
In other words, the author points to the fact that the universe is our observation, but we forget the observation part and ascribe primacy to the 'observed'.

b) An experimental test of non-local realism | Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05677
The authors conclude that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.
In other words, the authors indicate that 'locality' and 'realism', the two axioms of Physicalsitic worldview, are untenable in light of results of their experiments.

c) Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system | Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10119
The authors conclude "Our results illustrate a deep incompatibility between quantum mechanics and classical physics that cannot in any way result from entanglement."
Physicalists usually explain away the startling results of quantum mechanics by resorting to entanglement. This paper indicates that no non-contextual theory can be tenable -- there can be no a priori truth apart from the observation. All quantum theories are contextual and we surely constitute the most important context.

d) https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3343.pdf?proof=true
Manning et al., conclude "Our experiment confirms Bohr’s view that it does not make sense to ascribe the wave or particle behaviour to a massive particle before the measurement takes place."
Wheeler’s supposition that a choice affects the ‘past history’ (of the photon) has been shown to be correct in past experiments using photon paths. In this paper, authors re-demonstrate with slow-moving massive helium atom what was already known for massless fast-moving photons that a future event (the method of detection) causes the photon (or the helium atom) to decide its past.

e) Quantum erasure with causally disconnected choice https://www.pnas.org/content/110/4/1221
The paper recommends abandoning the ‘Realism’ worldview altogether, as no realistic picture is compatible with its results which hinge causally on disconnected choice.
...
I AM A MARXIST WHO HAS HOWEVER DISCARDED THE MATERIALISTIC-REALISM WORLDVIEW. I will reiterate that Marxism needs to question its foundational worldview.

Interesting and very deep, IMO.

First, I am not a fan of Marx.
Second I don't think Marxism can work as a materialist philosophy. Spirituality to me is more or less the pursuit of mental health. Then end goal of which is to find peace in oneself.

Marxism wants freedom the freedom for all to build, create according to their capacity/desires and I think sees capitalism as a prison.

Materialism/capitalism is about costs. Ever action has a cost. Now this is my view, not Marxist's view, capitalism is a system of fairness in cost. Not a system of equity. You cannot have both equity and fairness.

For equity, someone has to take on the burden of costs for those who cannot. The resistance to equity exists because this broaches the feeling of fairness in the burden of material costs.

The only "material" way to overcome this is enforcement, enforcement leads to resentment, eventually to violence.

IMO, in the spiritual sense of things, there are no costs. Cost is not a burden for anyone as there is no material payment required. In Christianity for example, there is no material payment required. Just a spiritual payment.

Marxism fails because it does not address the feeling of unfairness of cost to bring about equity. IMO it needs a spiritual component, process, transformation which would allow the individual to let go of this feeling.
 

rocala

Well-Known Member
A very interesting post @atanu, thank you. @Laika that is a really nice answer. Welcome to the rethink club. I have been re-thinking for a long while. It reminds me of my attitude to Jesus. I suspect he was a bodhisattva. You could say that is re-thinking Christianity, but it does not make me a Christian. Re-thinking is a form of farewell.
I can only speak from my London experience, but I think that if I were speaking with Marxists, I would feel safer confessing to murder than to have had spiritual experiences. I am too old for that kind of hostility.
 

Laika

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
A very interesting post @atanu, thank you. @Laika that is a really nice answer. Welcome to the rethink club. I have been re-thinking for a long while. It reminds me of my attitude to Jesus. I suspect he was a bodhisattva. You could say that is re-thinking Christianity, but it does not make me a Christian. Re-thinking is a form of farewell.

Thanks. Rethinking does feel like a kind of farewell. It’s not very straight forward and it does take time to get it right.

I am too old for that kind of hostility.

The ratio of controversy to effort and reward has got too high for me as well. It’s kinda sad, but here we are.

I can only speak from my London experience, but I think that if I were speaking with Marxists, I would feel safer confessing to murder than to have had spiritual experiences.

And now on the communist edition of The Sixth Sense:

“I see purged people!” :eek:
 
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