The vulgar materialism criticized by Marx, Lenin, etc is a passive one that will happily include social relations in its purview. It is primarily called vulgar in contrast to being dialectical. Where Marx, Lenin, etc see a capacity to drive revolution through class consciousness and revolutionary consciousness, emphasizing that this is a necessary piece of revolution that interplays with material conditions, their predecessors (and contemporaries, and subsequent critics) would more often stand back and say that the events unfolded due to, simply, the material conditions.
Here’s a Lenin quote among many: “The new Iskra-ist method of expressing its views reminds one of Marx’s opinion (in his famous) of the old materialism, which was alien to the ideas of dialectics. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, said Marx, the point, however, is to change it”
Lenin’s analysis is simple, possibly even simplistic compared to what he was referencing, but he played a big part in defining what the term means.
It’s not hard to find folks here using this as a form of fatalism, including vulgar materialism. It pops up both in the form of saying proletarian revolution and socialism are inevitable and in those who take hard determinism (often without even knowing that’s what it is) to its logical conclusion of the idea of trying to do anything to build revolution being a category error. I would like people to organize, not paralyze themselves with their first foray into philosophy.
The vulgar materialism criticized by Marx, Lenin, etc is a passive one that will happily include social relations in its purview. It is primarily called vulgar in contrast to being dialectical. Where Marx, Lenin, etc see a capacity to drive revolution through class consciousness and revolutionary consciousness, emphasizing that this is a necessary piece of revolution that interplays with material conditions, their predecessors (and contemporaries, and subsequent critics) would more often stand back and say that the events unfolded due to, simply, the material conditions.
Here’s a Lenin quote among many: “The new Iskra-ist method of expressing its views reminds one of Marx’s opinion (in his famous) of the old materialism, which was alien to the ideas of dialectics. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, said Marx, the point, however, is to change it”
Lenin’s analysis is simple, possibly even simplistic compared to what he was referencing, but he played a big part in defining what the term means.
Althusser is also a good read on this: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1953/onmarx/on-marxism.htm .
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It’s not hard to find folks here using this as a form of fatalism, including vulgar materialism. It pops up both in the form of saying proletarian revolution and socialism are inevitable and in those who take hard determinism (often without even knowing that’s what it is) to its logical conclusion of the idea of trying to do anything to build revolution being a category error. I would like people to organize, not paralyze themselves with their first foray into philosophy.
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