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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Dialectical-Materialism: Theory and Application
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Among the greatest contributions to human thought stands the tradition of Dialectical Materialism - a hard-labored theory of metaphysics that offers tools from which to construct objective analysis of material phenomena, including those societal, cultural, and scientific.
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Not sure what you mean by this
It's not literally inevitable, no (ignoring biological determinism because it's ultimately irrelevant here -- there's no way to calculate what the future of society will be even if everything is deterministic); what's inevitable is that, since capitalism is inherently unsustainable, either another system succeeds capitalism (ideally a socialist one) or capitalism destroys all human life (very unlikely)
Depends on whom you're trying to convince, but you certainly don't need to talk about inevitability or "evil". You shouldn't ignore morality but ultimately there's no such thing as an "evil" person, every person's actions is determined by their material conditions (past and current); the reason capitalism should be overthrown (aside from the fact that it's unsustainable) is that it encourages people to exclusively act in their own interests and sacrifice everything else for their profit, necessitates the arbitrary exploitation of the vast majority of people by a relatively small group, is the reason for the ongoing environmental destruction, etc.
I think I care more about classical morality than most comrades, and it's fair to say that most people are more or less products of their time. But you can't convince me that people like Henry Kissinger, Hitler, Mussolini, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Zelenskyy, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and many countless others aren't evil.
Yes, ultimately morality is a very subjective social construct, but it definitely exists.
it depends on what you mean by "evil"; there's no guarantee that they would've turned out like that under different circumstances, but that doesn't mean I think there's anything redeemable about them
I feel that evil is self-explanatory. But a very broad definition I would use in most contexts is committing unnecessarily inhumane, despicable actions against other living things for no justifiable reason, purely out of the selfish and completely negative kind of sadism and self-interest against the basic decency and needs of a society by hurting others or damaging the public good.
Spousal abusers, rapists, unprovoked murderers, those who abuse animals or kill them wantonly without need for food or to the need to keep their population numbers down, or for selling/privatizing economic enterprises when not necessary for personal financial kickback.
I think that prison abolition is a very noble goal, for example. But in the meantime, socialists will unfortunately have to plan ahead at least decades into the future for the construction of prisons to house people like rapists, murderers, human and endangered species traffickers, bourgeoisie, etc.
by that definition, yes, it exists; my point was that there's no inherent "evil" in people that can be detached from their past and present material conditions
I'm kind of stunned that you're saying that. I'm not overly pissed, but I'm not more than confused. I guess I'm "whelmed", or like someone asked me to "review" a porcupine with a trout shoved up it's ass while riding a unicycle. I don't know where to start.