Marx says we must change material conditions in order to change ideas - David Harvey
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- This is a clip from Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: How Capital Evolves, in which Prof. Harvey cites Karl Marx's argument that societal change comes not from simply debating ideas, but addressing the material conditions of lives and experiences that form people's ideas.
"We then fall for the fallacy of saying if we want to change the world we have to change people's ideas. Marx's point is you can't change people's ideas unless you exchange the experiences upon which those ideas are based." - David Harvey
Watch the entire episode: • Anti-Capitalist Chroni...
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This is so right. As David Graeber said:
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
The world has been made by the rich and powerful for the benefit of the rich and powerful and we the small, weak and poor have been continuously conditioned since birth to believe that the world as it has been made is the result of some law of nature that cannot be changed. This is greatly in error.
Graeber continues to be such an important voice.
Adam Curtis used this quote in his new essay film.
I'd have to differ with David Graeber's view of the world.
@notsoancinetpelican, --- I would substitute the words "rich and powerful" with "Capital" so it reads for the benefit of capital in your third sentence.
Why? Because the rich and powerful are only representative/owners of capital. Capital itself is a capital-wage labor relationship. The day when labor-power is no longer bought and sold as wage labor will be the day working with the forces of production will take a new social form. This is the difference between the Graeber view and the view that examines the general history of work developing through time into new social forms in different epochs. Our's is an epoch towards its end; an end not without absence of a beginning.
Great quote and I agree with it except for the "as easily" part. It's one thing to become aware that what we take as natural is basically a construct but a very different thing to to ker with that construct and try to remake it. Not easy at all!! Look around!
In sociology there is a view that "society is made, repaired and maintained" .
This idea is taught in high schools in China. The ruling class consolidates its reign by building a superstructure of the society. It looks like things have been that way forever, and will last forever. This ideas consolidate the economic relationship (capitalist and worker, buyer and seller.) as through it is natural.
Humans have short memories, if the world has been a certain way ever since you were born its natural to think it has always been that way.
I wish we taught Marx in the West.
Not only is he not taught in economics at the university level, he's not taught in any of the humanities, including philosophy. I wonder why.
When we are born into a cult we don't know anything but what the cult wants us to know (media). The movie they live is absolutely accurate, not aliens, but the elite which they do hint at in the movie as the aliens are working with the elites to enslave us and also addresses the "tattle tales" or traitors to their own class as well.
Then why doesn't China actually transform social relations? Maintaining the capitalist mode of production is perhaps the most anti-Marxist thing a government could do.
@@swrcomswrcom5306 I think they plan to once they've built up their productive forces. That's what Xi's socialism 2050 proclamation was all about. Whether they will, though, remains to be seen...
Amongst other things, like our shoes, homes and buses, humans produce ideas. In fact, humans produce ideas about how to produce shoes, homes and buses, in other words, material things and even services. Humans think about matters which might explain what is happening to themselves and in the Universe as a whole. The point is that human minds create ideas, ideas which end up being religions, philosophies and science. What tends to get lost is the human basis in the creation of ideas. Ideas explaining the totality of what is happening are socially transmitted by humans to each other. In our formative years, we start learning to attribute human power to ideas, power which is separate from the human act of creating these ideas in the first place. That process of attribution happens in the mind. Thus, we humans are socialised, taught to learn, so to speak, that the ideas we create have created us and in a weird way they do because when enough people begin to think in the same way about the same issues, those ideas become a totality we call culture. Religions and philosophies function this way and when enough people adopt them, they become a material force, because we make them into a material force by the actions we take in our daily lives. So it is that an empty abstraction becomes a material force because we make it so, even though we think the idea is making it so.
Marx points to wage labour and says that wage labour produces capital. He also criticises the conservative aphorism, "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" as it is that social relation between employer and employee which leads to the labourer producing the wealth of nations, but not owning or controlling the collective product of labour. While the bourgeois politicians are praised for policies which create jobs, the material reality is that workers are selling their abilities to produce wealth to people who employ them and then who owns the wealth labour produces, wealth that is called 'capital'. The legal owners are called 'capitalists' or 'investors' or 'employers' or financiers (the ones who loan wealth in the form of money in order obtain interest which amounts to more wealth).
What is wage labour but an abstraction, a form filled with the material reality of a worker producing stuff. The workers don't own what they produce. They don't sell what they produce. The workers sell their skills and time for the market price of their labour power, the power to produce stuff for their employer to own and sell. And that is why Marx called on workers to inscribe, "abolish the wage system" on their banners. Instead, what workers are told by the bourgeois to do is inscribe, 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work' on their banners. And what does the left tell the workers to do through their leadership of the parities and unions? Ask yourself that question the next time you go to a demonstration.
There are two examples coming from Brazilian History that may help having a glimpse on what may or may not be those conditions under which the building or nourishing of ideas become possible.
One of them is a conversation - reproduced in Darcy Ribeiro's anthropological masterpiece, 'O Povo Brasileiro' ('The Brazilian People') - between the French protestant Jean de Léry and a senior native, in which the 'savage' inquires de Léry - in quite a Socratic fashion - about the reasons Europeans had to wreak havoc on the forests (with ax and fire) in order to get the famous 'pau-brasil' (brazilwood): needless to say, the old native couldn't qualify the already capitalism of the Portuguese except as sheer madness, because, he explained, they were unequivocally destroying theirs and their descendants' future by destroying the jungle.
Even as compared to the material and intellectual conditions of Europe in the XVI century, we are still tempted to see the way of living of then Brazilian natives as awfully rudimentary, although, as we've seen, they've shown to be plainly capable to point out with astonishing precision the crux of money and exchange (barter) madness.
The other example, which I touched upon earlier in a comment to the previous A-CC video, is about the conditions that the governments by the PT ('Partido dos Trabalhadores' - 'Workers Party') implemented to improve the intellectual and professional levels of low-wage people by funding their studies in 'universities' and 'independent colleges' either public or private, that is, created just to profit from the widespread financing provided by the government. No wonder that, except for those coming out of the public universities, known as left-leaning, those graduates from the private schools were clearly right-oriented, and in fact readied to be of priceless service for the companies they would end up working at. No wonder that, also, almost all of them, issued from the poorer classes and now stepping up on the low or higher middle class, were wearing yellow-and-green t-shirts during the demonstrations that resulted in the coup against Dilma Roussef.
This time the material conditions provided by the 'left' were completely hijacked by capitalism's extreme right to the point of turning the people who benefited form them against their benefactor.
In conclusion, someway the 'conditions' might be of importance for forming adequate ideas. However, it seems that they can be any, unpredictable, as well as the ideas they will come to support.
So do you think that the material circumstances of the pandemic and the collapse of the economy (in the US) which followed has changed the thoughts of the people that neoliberalism is a great idea?
Wage labour and capital still exists.
Here's a somewhat similar text I've found in Capital:
"My (Marx's) view is that each particular mode of production, and the relations of production corresponding to it at each given moment, in short 'the economic structure of society', is 'the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness', and that 'the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life."
From Capital Volume 1, Chapter 1, section 4, footnote 35
bettering material conditions renders revolutionary potential. worsening material conditions potentiates revolutionary potential. however i dont know if its for the best.
Watch How to Start a Revolution DVD documentary about nonviolent resistance and read From Dictatorship to Democracy the book. We can direct the revolutionary potential more than we know, and Dr Sharp tells us how to do it.
Thank you David,
for this valuable political lesson. If relatedness and hence relationships are based on abstract ideas, then why or what is it that determines whether or not one cares about such things? For example, some with an abundance of material wealth could not care less, whereas some with relatively little material wealth care about it a lot?
This made me think of Plato’s cave. A new world requires imagination. Why artists are important to the movement.
Anyway as Harvey says we need to change the material conditions...
@@jheisondavidmartinezmorale9719 Yes, that will take imagination.
@@Barklord I’ll check it, thank you! My knowledge of academic philosophy isn’t very deep but it sounds interesting.
@@Barklord it's interesting, because we always see neoplatonism as an idealist philosophy full of mistics and magics...
He's literally saying the opposite. Ideas mean nothing on their own. Platos hyper idealistic philosophy, where only the mental conceptions of reality confer genuine reality, is like, quintessentially opposed to a materialist understanding of reality. Ideas don't mean anything on their own. Imagining a super duper hyper abundance machine wont produce it out of pure imagination.
So a mutual aid approach to activism would be more valuable than most of the abstract arguments we can make because it changes material conditions. If I understand correctly.
What do you mean by "mutual aid approach"?
@@omegablack7135 Sorry, I'm not sure what you are unclear about. I mean any sort of mutual aid because it changes the material conditions even if just temporarily.
"Mutual aid is a form of solidarity-based support, in which communities unite against a common struggle, rather than leaving individuals to fend for themselves".
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 I see now. Good idea, but it's not exactly what dialectical materialism states. It's a structural critique of social-historical change : if you want to change the zeitgeist (ideas in a society which informs their perception of reality, and reality itself) you must change material conditions.
@@omegablack7135 Yes, and mutual aid changes material conditions. Perhaps only temporarily but on occasion it helps make permanent change in the material conditions of our fellows. Or am I still missing the point?
If absolutely nothing else it helps associate socialism with improvement in material conditions and that will stand us in good stead.
@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 I think you're right, fundamentally. I don't think the material world has a monopoly on the movement of history; I think ideas can change history, too.
That said, the analysis of dialectical materialism argues that the world of ideas is inherent to any configuration of material reality. This structure supports or destroys certain social relations and the prevailing ideas at the time. Social movements are good, they can be a driving force but their ultimate success is in reconfiguring material reality, since it is the most immediate and experientally-predominate reality.
Unfortunately we are no longer in the business of debating ideas and seeking advancement toward a common, desirable goal. We are struggling to survive with barely enough time to glance at the state of affairs with resentment and hostility whilst serving as both the targeted scapegoats and reluctant providers for a cultist influence what delights in pretending that it does not make slaves and charlatans of our species at the expense of our potential future.
Marx was correct. The human species is a behavioral product of its environment. All of our values, beliefs, and most of our behaviors as well are a result of our interactions with our environments throughout our lives. The only difference between a preacher and a thief is the environmental influences that have determined their actions. You change the environment, human behavior changes in response to the environment. And you cannot change human behaviors unless you first disrupt the environmental influences that are causing abhorrent behavioral patterns. This is why addiction therapy begins by removing the individual from their existing environment.
The Human species is the most social creature known to science. The more we cooperate, the more we excel, and the greater our personal satisfaction as well. So how could a social/economic system that ensures everyone is out for themselves in a glorified game of king of the hill, somehow be scientifically valid? Competitive environments are responsible for the creation of jealousy, greed, and violent antisocial behavioral patterns. Not only in the human species, but in every other social creation on the face of this planet. And people wonder why we have a mental health and addiction crisis? SMH......
Dialectical materialism.
Marxism is not about changing ideas . is about discovery of an identity as a class and finding a role to play in behalf of those we love. It is a struggle for survival. It is class warfare the field where ideas change. I was given a book called manifesto of the .... By Marx and my mind opened. I changed my vision of the world. Nobody came to change me.
Probably your most important video
👋🏼👋🏼
This is Marxism 101. The distinction between materialism/idealism and dialectic/metaphysics should be the first thing to understand before studying Marx (even if he is kind of explaining it himself accros his books). Yet, this video is always a useful reminder.
Here is Marx formulated in a more useful form which allows real solutions:
Ultimately, the 'Employee' makes the products, takes those products to the market, sells the same products, he made, to himself and finally he pays a fee known as Profit to some 'Owner' for a permission to own the same products he made and sold to himself.
The owner gets to collect profit for doing nothing.....and many call that 'earning' instead of 'taking'.
One solution Marx could not see is the ABC-tool which the government must use.
The ABC-tool:
A) Increase minimum wage
B) Tax the Wealthy more
C) Spend the extra tax revenue on valuable or necessary social programs.
( like, free education from cradle to grave, free basic haircuts, free public transport, free fiber-optic Internet, free healthcare, free basic food, free basic sex, free basic clothing, free basic accommodation, free basic phone calls, free basic clean water, etc.)
Those three requirements must be enacted as one package ALWAYS .. .. or else, the people lose their minimum purchasing power.
The ABC-tool works because increasing the purchasing power of the human-citizens makes them better consumers (i.e. a consumer is a human with disposable money to spend).
Better consumers create the need for more jobs. More jobs allow more businesses to facilitate those jobs while pursuing 'Profit'.
(Magic Formula: 'Your minimum Purchasing Power' = 'minimum wage' + 'Benefits payments' - 'Cost of dignified living from cradle to grave' - 'Taxes, fees, penalties')
@Reasoner Enlightened Marx could not see Social Democracy as a solution because he realized the contradictions of Capitalism cannot be remedied; the only solution is to overthrow it. In the same way, Einstein would not bother fixing the Aether Hypothesis because it simply cannot be saved.
@@ililililili5968
What does it mean "to overthrow it".
Whatever new system there is, it just MUST address the distribution of Wealth and the distribution of Power among the citizens.
Marx made the gigantic mistake to suggest leaving the Wealth extremely concentrated in "public hands" and then he was hoping that some political process of Power distribution would result in fair and just use of that Wealth.
@Reasoner Enlightened The bourgeoisie is to be removed from power so that the workers collectively own the means of production, which means they can produce for themselves instead of for the capitalist via wage labour. This is very different from the SocDem idea of preserving the bourgeoisie as ruling class so that exploitation continues, while welfare makes it less burdensome for the workers.
A socialist state is a dictatorship of the proletariat; a capitalist state is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Both can be democratic, but democracy in the former serves only the workers, while that in the latter serves only the capitalists. As for the specific method of implementing democracy in socialism, I suggest asking that on r/marxism101. People there are far more knowledgeable than a humble student such as me. I hope I’ve helped you.
@@ililililili5968 Exactly. Lenin and Luxemburg also wrote about this topic, (consolidation of finance capital for imperialistic reasons, building of cartels, etc. because of the inherent internal contradictions of capitalism (e.x. Usage rate versus Exchange rate; profit motive.)) if one wants to read more into this topic.
Squirrels don't pay rent and the experts are baffled. That's not an idea, it the true reality of the relationship between lord and Master. Master being money, and us all being the dependants. Money supercedes free will. See how that works ?
So material conditions gave rise to ideas...like Marxism?
ey 420 lamo
The revolution doesn't depend on improving the material conditions of life of the working class. In any case the oppressive conditions are what determine the decisions. The American working class is an example of domestication. It is in the context of the relationship of class warfare that oppression becomes real. The ideas change in that field of reality. The American working class is comfortable enough that when the relationship with material things hit that comfort, ideas will change. The Profr. complicates the problem which should not be .
Nah your analysis ignores capitalist hegemony and how when people’s material conditions improve they demand more and vice versa
@@chidorirasenganz don't misinterpret my idea. I am not saying that material conquests are not needed. What I say is that ideas change in the context of class warfare . The American working class has indeed conquered many material things but had become a collaborating agent with capitalism for many decades. In abdicating to the capital after the new deal abandoned the role it played. How do you explain that change of ideas. ??
@@georgefurman4371 I’d describe that as red scare blacklisting + the attacks on organized labor with the rise of neoliberalism.
Marginalizing those in leadership and those committed to the left created an intellectual gap. While Libertarians and Neoliberals were ascendant because their continued ideological development.
Next came the assault on organized labor starting with the arrival of stagflation.
Once labor was in a weakened state, neoliberals could begin peeling back the new deal.
The results of this capitalist hegemony in 2021 is that it’s more easy for someone to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism
@@chidorirasenganz I am a not in the position to imagine . I present the reality of a stage in the struggle of the working class to find a leadership and recover the ideas that guided the working class advances of the new deal. This stage we live in is that historic moment where becomes indispensable that recovery of purpose and identity lost. That necessity that the Profr. presented as " change of ideas" as reflection of a relationship of acceptance to the system of capitalism.
And that is the context in which I say that ideas change. Presently I ask what changes significative enough we can explain in the consciousness of the American working class after confronting fascism in real life as we are presently witnessing. The playbook of fascism is in action right now. What assessment can we make in that change of ideas ??
@@chidorirasenganz to focus more on the point that matters .. Marx said that the motor of history is class warfare. That means that is in conquering the material benefits that secure a better life is what gives the people the ideas needed to progress , to improve. And then the dominant class resistance to the advance tries to take away this victories since it gives power to the people . That starts the process of ideas changing. Not the comfort but the loss of conquests. For a while the "prosperity" of the past post war era in conjunction with the abdication of the working class leadership to continue the fight pre-new deal gave the corporate class the opportunity to create the "superstructure" needed to change the identity of the working class , to revise history setting the stage of domestication we still live under. The intellectuality or the few remaining of that generation know this process.
The file clerk, exemplifies the workforce of the technological society. During a period in shifting to centralization, all departments of the corporate function, finance included, were seated in a central common area when doing client (project, client) work.
One the technological society, this is what socrates, and ee may face. Rebel ideas .. Mocking the gods .. Public displays of the likes of Jack Ma .. More constraint, surveilance at work.. Corporate cringe one tech programmer on YT named grind reel points to it. .. The firewall protects the capitalist from invention, natural science. Geo-Bastardization Logic..
Now, to make it all much more intricate and deceitful, add the (material) distortions of 2.8 times more debt than GDP (values), overwhelmingly invested in financial (intangible) assets, hugely outsmarting labor (wage earners) and it is even more difficult to debunk "capitalism". 😱🤣🙄
But, look at the material outcome to capital owners, more than everybody else, and you get an idea.
FYI in the US of 50 years this is a ratio top 10% to bottom 90% of $248.3 to $46.5 trillion... yep, with a T... 😱😂😜
Maybe if you learned Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), you would know that the debt-to-GDP numbers aren't as scary as you've been led to believe.
@@susanmercurio1060 🤓
I'm not scared by debt, but how it is (not) invested, thus not growing the jobs or economy (GDP), however since 50 years in reality devaluing labor (employees), favoring capital accumulation! 😱
In America a 45 to 1 ratio... Debt in this case a tyranny 😝
@@Bjorn2055 : Which kind of debt are you talking about - the national "debt" (which is not a debt at all) - or household debt?
@@susanmercurio1060 🤓
Look up Rana Foroohar interviews on YT, or reviews of her book Makers & Takers.
85% of all credit creation not invested in US jobs, but in financial assets, thus inflating all assets like stocks and real estate, but more harmful, the capital share on income + wealth.
Since 1970 45 times that of labor.
The true context of America's Great Divide (PBS Frontline). 😀
And why China in future easily outcompete the US and Europe...
@@susanmercurio1060 the national (gov) debt in America causing $400 billion in debt service every year, taxes all Americans pay for, less public services or higher taxes, like property taxes...
"A man's greatest work is to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the things that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of those who cherished them, to take their horses between his knees and to press in his arms the most desirable of their women." - Genghis Khan
The conundrum of intellectuals complicating Marx.
Sitting in the AC, with indoor plumbing, a smartphone, a stocked grocery store a mile away and a cop 3 minutes away gives you a different perspective and ideology than the guy living off grid growing his own food. Neither is right or wrong, just different and their need for self protection and government involvement is different.
Well that's relativism and it is not the point as there is a dominant ideology (and the material conditions that support it) that is far reaching, regardless to what some fringe people "living off the grid" believe. Just wait and sooner or later a bulldozer will demolish the forest you live in.
@@_ata_3 That is not relativism, that’s reality. People will have different perspectives in different circumstances. That’s a fact. That doesn’t deny that the reason for that is a corrupt system. Nor does it claim that the current situation will remain as is. Your comment is incredibly bizarre. You seemed to have projected some sort of reactionary relativist agenda on someone just pointing out basic truths.
@@Liliquan I'm replying to this: "Neither is right or wrong, just different and their need for self protection and government involvement is different." Marx's point in the passage is to explain where people's ideas come from. It is not to discuss if people's beliefs are right or wrong. So that comment diverts into a moral relativist argument of what the video (and Marx's theory on ideology) is about. If the title of the video is "Marx says we must change material conditions in order to change ideas" and the comment replies that there is nothing wrong with different ideas then obviously it is missing the whole point of the video and diverting into a superficial observation which you call "basic truth". Which is funny because most of the time that what we call common sense is the first victim of the dominant ideology.
You'll need a working government to be able to be left alone. Otherwise capitalists will destroy you. Just ask native people all around the globe.
@@IkBerend Yeah a working government that preserves class relations.