this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Right now, I don't have any sources ready, and I know for certain that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on idealism explicitly excludes non-recent branches of idealist schools of thought.
There are at least two definitions of ontological idealism (and two corresponding ones for ontological materialism) that I have seen. One of which characterises idealist schools of thought as positing that (some) non-material things have some sort of primacy over material things (note that non-material things are not limited to thoughts). Another definition is broader and simply requires idealist schools of thought to posit that non-material things exist (while the corresponding definition for materialism requires those schools to posit that only material things exist).
Contrary to popular perception, idealism does not require you to believe in magic, including that we can psychically change matter. Simply, for example, subscribing to the idea that math does not depend on matter is idealist.
Also, while religious idealism (most prominently Christian idealism) does require you to believe in magic, it also doesn't require one to believe that it is thoughts that have any sort of primacy over matter.
I am also pretty sure that I'm not alone in considering relevant disagreements to be at least mostly linguistic in nature. I have heard that Wittgenstein said something to the same effect, but have not checked.
i personally thought the most common form of idealism was summed up as this: "humans cannot perceive reality perfectly, they perceive things to their human limit and see appearances of things"
or, alternatively: "humans have experiences that trascend humanity itself and can't be fully understood by humans"
For Marx in particular, he saw any theory divorced from practical experience as a slipperly slope towards idealism - I'm still working through this argument myself, though, and I believe I misunderstood his point. I'm not very strong on my Young Hegelian critiques, truthfully
It is definitely not that. The points about imperfection of perception are not relevant to either of idealism and materialism themselves.
I have not encountered Marx saying so, but that would be silly, as idealism isn't some sort of a detachment from practice, and I would argue that there are no serious incompatibilities between idealism and Marxism (at the very least, nobody has managed to bring any of such to my attention, so far).
You want to pin down absolute definitions of idealism vs materialism, capitalism vs socialism, but the precise meanings of these words are not agreed by all thinkers if they are consciously defined at all. Many thinkers who are called idealist did not self-identify as such, same for capitalist economists.
These terms ought to be considered as post-hoc groupings of an eclectic set of philosophies, even contradictory ones. So what definition of idealism are you applying?
How can this be? Marx wrote a bunch of polemics against idealism. The German Ideology notably, but also the Gotha Critique, Theses on Feuerbach, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844). Are you defining Marxism as the school that emerged after Marx, or Marx himself?
I want rigour in this stuff, rather than operating on vibes.
Also, I am myself a mathematical Platonist, meaning that I am an ontological idealist myself, and, given how many other socialists both at least claim to subscribe to materialism (which, I would argue, is not always a true claim) and at least claim that Marxism and idealism have significant incompatibilities (which I have not managed to encounter so far), I'd rather resolve this lack of coherence. Either my understanding is incorrect, or a lot of other people are being incorrect. I am fine with the matter being resolved with me being proven incorrect, but so far people have not managed to bring up any relevant incompatibilities.
That does not mean that we should avoid defining terms or explain understandings of words. Furthermore, a person can be aware of multiple incompatible linguistic frameworks and try to understand something by attempting to apply each of them. In particular, I brought up the fact that I am aware of multiple definitions for the terms 'idealism' and 'materialism'.
If one refuses to explain what they mean by their words, then they should not expect to be understood, I would also argue.
I provided relevant explanations elsewhere in this tree of comments, but the one that I consider to be a 'better' understanding of the word 'idealism' is one that characterises idealist schools of thought as positing that non-material stuff (not necessarily mental non-material stuff) has primacy over material stuff.
Well, just because somebody says something doesn't mean that they are correct. This might seem unwarrantedly harsh, but we do know that Marxist thinkers (obviously, not just them, but only they are relevant here) did not always make tested claims. Some of those claims were tested after being put into works, and some are yet to be tested (like Lenin's anti-parliamentarism from, IIRC, State and Revolution).
IIRC, Marx tried to define idealist schools of thought as positing that mental stuff has some sort of primacy over matter. That definition is bad at least because, according to it, schools of thought like Platonism (and its offshoots) and most variations of religious idealism - famous examples of idealist schools of thought - are not idealist schools of thought, which is silly.
I do not currently have time to delve into those works, as I have thousands of pages of dense reading material to go through that are much more important for me right now.
So, if there are incompatibilities between idealism and Marxism (however you understand what Marxism is), I'm all ears.
I am making rather broad strokes here, but I'm pretty sure that what most people here would understand as Marxism doesn't actually have significant incompatibilities with idealism.