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ChristianKl comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong
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A key of Marxist thought is the rejection of the idea of God. The Marxist morality that drove the Russian revolutionaries was different than Christian morality.
I don't the an inherent problem with blaming the Russian revolution on that change in morality. It's a bit like putting the blame that the crusades happened on Christianity.
Was it really? For example, "the meek shall inherit the earth" transfers basically unchanged.
In Christianity the meek somehow inherent the earth while staying meek. In Marxism they do it through running a revolution and overthrowing the old order.
That sounds like an empirical prediction, not a moral claim.
In Marxism there's no difference between empirical predictions about the far future and moral claims. Marx basically got the idea that you can make empirical predictions about how moral standards will be at the end of history. According to Marx all actions that move the world in the direction of being more in line with the moral standards at the end of history are morally good.
You're making a category error. Historical materialism just doesn't have anything to say on the subject of morality, certainly nothing so silly as that. At the end of history the universe will be dirt and dust, but I haven't seen any Marxist who cares (though I think I did once encounter someone who concluded from this and Aristotelian teleology that morality is whatever maximizes entropy, lol.)
More generally, even if we can make reasonable claims about what Marxists' and Christians' effective moralities, asking whether these are the same moralities or not is a confused question, for entirely different reasons.
You're misreading the Marxist "end of history". To Marx, history is the story of class struggle, and so once there are no more classes there is no more history.
You might both be confusing Marxist and Marxian thought.
I'm certainly not confused, but those trying to make that distinction might be. His political and sociological theories followed directly from his economic theories - refuting the labor theory of value is really sufficient to defeat Marx entirely, or at least eliminate anything that wasn't already said better by Hegel.
OK, sorry for the superfluous advice then. I have only had a cursory glance at your discussion.
Marx burrowed the idea of history from Hegel.
For Marx history is the process of social changes. When that process of changes reaches it's end, you have Marx's end of history. For Marx that's a communist society in which all workers get equal pay and life happily ever after. Afterwards there are no social changes, therefore there's no history.
Marx makes a prediction that this communist society will come about. Things that move the world closer to that prediction are morally good for Marx.
I've seen several compelling arguments along similar lines.
Compelling? Do you mean compelled to reject the premises or compelled to accept the conclusion?
Mostly, I was compelled to author the grandparent comment. So not very compelling.
That's not completely relevant, as "the meek shall inherit the earth" was a Christian claim.
I'd say that's like putting the blame for the battle of Normandy on democracy.
Very, very well put! (FYI, Eugine_Nier appears to be pro-democracy)
Uru uru uru... ur'f nyernql trggvat zber Znekvfg, abj gb nqq fbzr Ynpna sbe znkvzhz cbgrapl... qnza, Mvmrx unfa'g jevggra nalguvat nobhg ubj gb fcvxr crbcyr'f qvfphffvbaf jvgu Ynpnavna Serhqvfz! Tnu, guvf Serhqb-Znekvfz qnex fbeprel vf pbzcyvpngrq!
^ looks just right in rot13, too! Black Speech!
I can't tell whether you understood my point, or completely misunderstood it. I don't see where I was "thinking like a Marxist".
Not in this comment specifically - just a general thing about your view of economics' relation to social structures having similar focus (determinism etc) to the Marxist view. TimS has called you out on it recently, no?
But still, "moral fashion doesn't ever cause revolutions on its own" is a statement any Marxist would sign under. So in this regard you ironically proved closer to Marxism than the view you kinda-opposed as insufficiently strongly worded ("causal link about as evident as for crusades and Christianity"). See?
Ok, so you did misunderstand my intent.
My point, was mainly that the Crusades are not a good example of "religion causes people to do something evil".
Wait, why are the Crusades not a good example of religion causing people to do evil things? Do you think they weren't evil, or that religion wasn't to blame?
That depends on what you mean by those terms. Was the battle of Normandy a good thing?
I'm confused. Yes, D-Day was a good thing. Yes, D-Day was violence in service of democracy.
What does this have to do with whether (1) the Crusades were a good thing, or (2) whether religion (particularly Catholicism) was a substantial cause of the Crusades?
The crusades are often portrayed as violent Christians invading Muslim lands, which forgets that the Muslims violently took those lands from Christians in the first place.
On the other hand, no one complains that the battle of Normandy consisted of violent democracies attacking the lands of the Third Reich.
That religion wasn't to blame. Read the grandparents, most notably this.
EDIT: Wait, no. I had that backwards.
TGGP defends economic determinism here.
Heh! Cool, thanks.
Did the (nominal) Christians who did violent and terrible things forget God too?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn doesn't speak about "why people do violent things?" in the quote but about why the Russian revolution happened.