So, “historical materialism” is some collection of vague philosophical ideas by Marx.
I’m not sure how to respond to a statement this dismissive, but for what it’s worth, effective altruism is based on ‘vague philosophical ideas’, as are neoliberalism and all sorts of other ideologies, and if you want to be rational about the matter then you might want to start by taking ideas in philosophy seriously.
Previously, you replied to my claim that “to the extent they [utopian socialism and Marxism] are based on any evidence at all, this evidence is highly subjective interpretation of history” by saying that “Marxism was derived from materialist epistemology”. This is extremely misleading to say that Marxism was derived from something when that something is itself an invention of Marx!
I don’t understand what you are complaining about. Suppose I asked “what objective evidence is there that Givewell recommends good charities?” And you replied, “well, they recommend the ones that are best rated by their analysis method.” And I said, “This is extremely misleading to say that charities’ ratings are derived from something when that something is itself an invention of Givewell!” Clearly, such complaints are silly.
To say that historical materialism is “evidence” for Marxism is to deprive to word “evidence” of all meaning.
Except I didn’t say that the mere existence of historical materialism was evidence for Marxism. I said that analysis conducted through the lens of historical materialism provided evidence for Marx’s theories.
If you honestly think “historical materialism” is an objective truth that everyone are obliged to accept (even if we assumed it is well defined at all, which it probably isn’t), then I see no point in continuing this conversation.
I’m not sure what point you could see in continuing this conversation either way, since you clearly aren’t armed with any claims which haven’t already been repeated and answered over and over in the most basic of arguments over socialism and Marxist philosophy, so you can’t possibly be trying to convince me, and because I’ve already stated that I’m far from the most helpful or informed authority on socialism and Marxist philosophy, so you can’t possibly be trying to learn or have your arguments answered.
Quantitative does not imply “you can look at it really quickly”.
Sure, that was a snide remark.
“Sociopolitical systems are complicated” does not imply “we should treat weak evidence as if it is strong evidence”.
I didn’t say we should.
If a question is so complicated that you cannot find any strong evidence to support an answer,
There is strong evidence for it. It’s just not quantitative.
One is that e.g. becoming vegetarian will not cause a catastrophe if it turns outs that animals lack consciousness. On the other hand, a communist revolution will (and did) cause a catastrophe if our assumptions about its consequences are misguided.
No, the ‘catastrophes’ of communist revolutions were due to totalitarian governments and food shortages. We might think that placing the means of production in public control would not result in a totalitarian government nor would it result in a food shortage, primarily because both of those things are generally implausible in modern contexts and secondarily because the only evidence you have provided for public ownership of the means of production leading to catastrophe is a very poor statistical analysis you ran in the back of your head about a very few countries conducting a flawed attempt of a very particular mode of Marxist-Leninist socialism.
On the other hand, Marxist theories make complicated detailed claims about complicated detailed social systems. Such a claim is very far from the prior and strong evidence is required to justify it.
This is not true for Marxism any more than it is true for other social theories or arguments negating Marxism, so it doesn’t tell us anything about whether Marxism should have a weak prior. In any case, usually in philosophy and sociology, scholars go straight to arguments and evidence about the theories themselves, because they’re much stronger and much more objective than haggling over ill-defined priors. It’s strange that you recoil at the idea of sociological analysis that doesn’t seem objective when you are explicitly relying upon subjective Bayesian epistemology.
I’m not saying we have a lot of data. I’m saying we don’t have much data but the data we do have points in the opposite direction.
Except it doesn’t. There have been many cases of public ownership of the means of production having positive results, and there have been countless cases of private ownership of the means of production resulting in abominable crimes to humanity.
Regarding dictatorship, my hypothesis is that there is a causal link communism->dictatorship, so it is hardly a confounder.
And the hypothesis is a poor one. First because it’s not very relevant, as the bulk of postwar socialist theory (and practice) in the West has involved democratic or other means of implementation which don’t involve dictators. Second because several Marxist countries in the twentieth century, such as Chile, have had democratically elected governments (in Chile’s case, one which was replaced by a capitalist dictator).
And many of “the people who seriously engage” reach the diametrically opposite conclusion.
Right. Which is why you won’t catch me making sweeping claims that one side or the other is all wrong without engaging with the relevant literature. You will catch me taking scholars and theorists on both sides seriously, because that is the rational approach when informed people reach opposite conclusions.
I’m not sure what “fairly” means or why it should be ranked so high in importance.
Generally we take “fairness” to mean “equal” or “egalitarian” in some way: for instance, if 80% of the wealth were controlled by 20% of the population, that would be an “unfair” distribution of wealth. The primary, but far from only, reason this is important is that those who are impoverished derive much more utility from additional wealth than the wealthy do.
“Exploitation” is also a word that is used so often that its meaning became diluted
Exploitation has a very precise meaning in Marxist theory.
If the terms I used aren’t clear enough, I can rephrase the point: “it’s not clear that the fact that the West became rich over the last few centuries is something that speaks well to the goodness of capitalism, or if the only reason that the West is rich is because it systematically enslaved, raped and stole from the other three-quarters of the world, much of which is still recovering from the social and economic disasters caused by the West. So we’re not sure just how good capitalism is on balance for the world as a whole, especially in comparison to alternatives.”
The existing system (in Western-style democracies), with all its shortcomings, already underwent significant optimization and is pretty good compared to most alternatives.
I’m not sure why you keep talking about Western-style democracy, because the point of discussion here is whether the means of production should be privately or publicly controlled, which is a different issue. The issue here is capitalism, which often considered to not be good at all compared to many alternatives.
Yeah, and other people traced serious problems to other things like “the state exists and imposes regulation on the market” (for the record, I suspect that both groups are wrong).
And suspicion seems to be all that you have. In any case, socialism generally has a much stronger following in academia than Austrian libertarianism.
I’m not sure what point you could see in continuing this conversation either way, since you clearly aren’t armed with any claims which haven’t already been repeated and answered over and over in the most basic of arguments over socialism and Marxist philosophy...
Indeed I no longer see any point, given that you now reduced yourself to insults. Adieu.
It’s not an insult if it’s true. You clearly have no background knowledge or expertise in any of this, but you decided to argue with me, despite me repeatedly telling you that there are better places for you to learn. Don’t get offended when you get called out on it.
I’m not sure how to respond to a statement this dismissive, but for what it’s worth, effective altruism is based on ‘vague philosophical ideas’, as are neoliberalism and all sorts of other ideologies, and if you want to be rational about the matter then you might want to start by taking ideas in philosophy seriously.
I don’t understand what you are complaining about. Suppose I asked “what objective evidence is there that Givewell recommends good charities?” And you replied, “well, they recommend the ones that are best rated by their analysis method.” And I said, “This is extremely misleading to say that charities’ ratings are derived from something when that something is itself an invention of Givewell!” Clearly, such complaints are silly.
Except I didn’t say that the mere existence of historical materialism was evidence for Marxism. I said that analysis conducted through the lens of historical materialism provided evidence for Marx’s theories.
I’m not sure what point you could see in continuing this conversation either way, since you clearly aren’t armed with any claims which haven’t already been repeated and answered over and over in the most basic of arguments over socialism and Marxist philosophy, so you can’t possibly be trying to convince me, and because I’ve already stated that I’m far from the most helpful or informed authority on socialism and Marxist philosophy, so you can’t possibly be trying to learn or have your arguments answered.
Sure, that was a snide remark.
I didn’t say we should.
There is strong evidence for it. It’s just not quantitative.
No, the ‘catastrophes’ of communist revolutions were due to totalitarian governments and food shortages. We might think that placing the means of production in public control would not result in a totalitarian government nor would it result in a food shortage, primarily because both of those things are generally implausible in modern contexts and secondarily because the only evidence you have provided for public ownership of the means of production leading to catastrophe is a very poor statistical analysis you ran in the back of your head about a very few countries conducting a flawed attempt of a very particular mode of Marxist-Leninist socialism.
This is not true for Marxism any more than it is true for other social theories or arguments negating Marxism, so it doesn’t tell us anything about whether Marxism should have a weak prior. In any case, usually in philosophy and sociology, scholars go straight to arguments and evidence about the theories themselves, because they’re much stronger and much more objective than haggling over ill-defined priors. It’s strange that you recoil at the idea of sociological analysis that doesn’t seem objective when you are explicitly relying upon subjective Bayesian epistemology.
Except it doesn’t. There have been many cases of public ownership of the means of production having positive results, and there have been countless cases of private ownership of the means of production resulting in abominable crimes to humanity.
And the hypothesis is a poor one. First because it’s not very relevant, as the bulk of postwar socialist theory (and practice) in the West has involved democratic or other means of implementation which don’t involve dictators. Second because several Marxist countries in the twentieth century, such as Chile, have had democratically elected governments (in Chile’s case, one which was replaced by a capitalist dictator).
Right. Which is why you won’t catch me making sweeping claims that one side or the other is all wrong without engaging with the relevant literature. You will catch me taking scholars and theorists on both sides seriously, because that is the rational approach when informed people reach opposite conclusions.
Generally we take “fairness” to mean “equal” or “egalitarian” in some way: for instance, if 80% of the wealth were controlled by 20% of the population, that would be an “unfair” distribution of wealth. The primary, but far from only, reason this is important is that those who are impoverished derive much more utility from additional wealth than the wealthy do.
Exploitation has a very precise meaning in Marxist theory.
If the terms I used aren’t clear enough, I can rephrase the point: “it’s not clear that the fact that the West became rich over the last few centuries is something that speaks well to the goodness of capitalism, or if the only reason that the West is rich is because it systematically enslaved, raped and stole from the other three-quarters of the world, much of which is still recovering from the social and economic disasters caused by the West. So we’re not sure just how good capitalism is on balance for the world as a whole, especially in comparison to alternatives.”
I’m not sure why you keep talking about Western-style democracy, because the point of discussion here is whether the means of production should be privately or publicly controlled, which is a different issue. The issue here is capitalism, which often considered to not be good at all compared to many alternatives.
And suspicion seems to be all that you have. In any case, socialism generally has a much stronger following in academia than Austrian libertarianism.
Indeed I no longer see any point, given that you now reduced yourself to insults. Adieu.
It’s not an insult if it’s true. You clearly have no background knowledge or expertise in any of this, but you decided to argue with me, despite me repeatedly telling you that there are better places for you to learn. Don’t get offended when you get called out on it.