Ideologies are borne from the material; you do away with the mechanistic approach by understanding that it is a subset of material interacting with other material. To frame the ideology to float separate from the material is to give into metaphysics; a cartesian dualism. The rational is real and the real is rational. I found In Defense of Materialism: The Development of the Monist View of History by Plekhanov useful here. I’m happy to be corrected but the above screenshot just sounds like Great Man Theory with Marxist jargon.
What this posits is like the opposite of that [Great Man Theory], it’s that more and more everybody in charge can’t separate the PR spectactle from the actual thing
“As the empire declines the ruling class acts on ideology instead of real material politics” is in the OP’s screenshot?
That can be taken to mean that the ghouls ignore reality and assume their conception of the world (which is borne out of their ideologies) to be true instead.
That can be taken to mean that the ghouls ignore reality and assume their conception of the world (which is borne out of their ideologies) to be true instead.
Their actions are rational in attempt to maintain their class rule?
In that respect they are. But whether the course of action chosen is correct or not for the purpose of fulfilling their goals depends on whether they have a good grasp of reality. If they instead believe in incorrect ideologies (wunderwaffens can alone bring down Iran) they will make mistakes even though they are acting rationally insofar as the end goal is concerned.
Rationality does not have to presuppose correct predictions (ie account for all variables + outside metaphysical observer who believes such an accounting will lead to a particular determined path). Was the Soviet Union not socialist under Stalin because it failed enough to consider a Kruschev taking over? Was Stalin not rational?
Edited to add: this is not to mean that leaders do not have agency but what actions they are allowed to do in powered and enabled by the system that awarded them that power. As marxists we can consider all bourgoisie leaders as “stupid” but that framing is a double edged sword because they were still intelligent enough to be more powerful than us.
How do you expect someone to account for the totality of information?
We can’t; we can be rational without that. And they can be rational from their perspective.
If a driver does not understand how his engine works but finds the throttle no longer working he may then push the car from behind out of the petrol pump station in an effort to move the car forward. We could in turn say the low fuel light was blinking and the driver was stupid for not filling up his car with petrol instead. That does not mean the driver did not act rationally because he did not account for the reality of the warning light.
(Yeah that was a stretched analogy. I’m sticking with it)
Edited to add: to clarify - I’m adopting an Hegelian (-esque? Or at least an attempted marxist twist of it) defintion of rationality and very specifically the US ruling class actions are rational and borne of a material reality, not separate from it.
Rational from an out of touch perspective, yes. In the way that interacting with daturs hallucinations is rational to the person on datura and nobody else
Maybe we consider the bourgeoisie “science” was never a closer approximation to reality than the marxist-leninst one but that that did not exclude their rationality or leverage on power; their “hallucinations” were rational enough to win despite the lack of hallucinations of the marxist-leninist.
Ideologies are borne from the material; you do away with the mechanistic approach by understanding that it is a subset of material interacting with other material. To frame the ideology to float separate from the material is to give into metaphysics; a cartesian dualism. The rational is real and the real is rational. I found In Defense of Materialism: The Development of the Monist View of History by Plekhanov useful here. I’m happy to be corrected but the above screenshot just sounds like Great Man Theory with Marxist jargon.
What this posits is like the opposite of that, it’s that more and more everybody in charge can’t separate the PR spectactle from the actual thing
“As the empire declines the ruling class acts on ideology instead of real material politics” is in the OP’s screenshot?
That can be taken to mean that the ghouls ignore reality and assume their conception of the world (which is borne out of their ideologies) to be true instead.
Their actions are rational in attempt to maintain their class rule?
In that respect they are. But whether the course of action chosen is correct or not for the purpose of fulfilling their goals depends on whether they have a good grasp of reality. If they instead believe in incorrect ideologies (wunderwaffens can alone bring down Iran) they will make mistakes even though they are acting rationally insofar as the end goal is concerned.
Rationality does not have to presuppose correct predictions (ie account for all variables + outside metaphysical observer who believes such an accounting will lead to a particular determined path). Was the Soviet Union not socialist under Stalin because it failed enough to consider a Kruschev taking over? Was Stalin not rational?
Edited to add: this is not to mean that leaders do not have agency but what actions they are allowed to do in powered and enabled by the system that awarded them that power. As marxists we can consider all bourgoisie leaders as “stupid” but that framing is a double edged sword because they were still intelligent enough to be more powerful than us.
There isn’t a universal definition of rationality. How do you expect someone to account for the totality of information? That seems like a high bar.
We can’t; we can be rational without that. And they can be rational from their perspective.
If a driver does not understand how his engine works but finds the throttle no longer working he may then push the car from behind out of the petrol pump station in an effort to move the car forward. We could in turn say the low fuel light was blinking and the driver was stupid for not filling up his car with petrol instead. That does not mean the driver did not act rationally because he did not account for the reality of the warning light.
(Yeah that was a stretched analogy. I’m sticking with it)
Edited to add: to clarify - I’m adopting an Hegelian (-esque? Or at least an attempted marxist twist of it) defintion of rationality and very specifically the US ruling class actions are rational and borne of a material reality, not separate from it.
Rational from an out of touch perspective, yes. In the way that interacting with daturs hallucinations is rational to the person on datura and nobody else
Maybe we consider the bourgeoisie “science” was never a closer approximation to reality than the marxist-leninst one but that that did not exclude their rationality or leverage on power; their “hallucinations” were rational enough to win despite the lack of hallucinations of the marxist-leninist.