Free will in marxist thinking

[Futility Personified]

Ok, i'm not too good at this sort of thing but i've just had a lecture on free will vs determinism. All the way through I was feeling that material conditions (ie reality) determine free will by constraining (or expanding) our options, and that conditions determine pretty much anything, leaving our agency down to our class and our side in class conflict down to our disposition, which is also down to material conditions as those will shape our experiences which shape ourselves. Is this close to making sense, or can someone explain it to me, or should I just get some sleep?

[Narodnik]

AFAIK, Marxists, both authoritarian and libertarian, and almost all anarchists- are materialist, and thus determinist.

[Dean]

Ok, i'm not too good at this sort of thing but i've just had a lecture on free will vs determinism. All the way through I was feeling that material conditions (ie reality) determine free will by constraining (or expanding) our options, and that conditions determine pretty much anything, leaving our agency down to our class and our side in class conflict down to our disposition, which is also down to material conditions as those will shape our experiences which shape ourselves. Is this close to making sense, or can someone explain it to me, or should I just get some sleep?

I dunno how orthodox Marxist my position is, but this is what I recently said on the topic:


[Schopehnauer's] is the only rational viewpoint I've ever heard on the determinism / free will issue. Like so many issues, its not really that complicated, but if you want to make something "idealized" you can have some silly debate about it.

As I understand it, people have will that is free and determined materially because we exist as elements of the material world.

Look at it this way: an internal combustion engine is said to drive a car. You would not say that the engine ceases to drive the car because it is, in fact, chemical and physical reactions that move the car along. The car and chemical reactions are two different interpretations of the material world, not in any way precluding one another.

The same is true of free human will. We are free to do what is physically possible. Unless freedom means not being chained to the laws of physics, we have free will. Our free will exists within the framework of reality. "You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you will." -Schopenhauer.

[tuwix]

Ok, i'm not too good at this sort of thing but i've just had a lecture on free will vs determinism. All the way through I was feeling that material conditions (ie reality) determine free will by constraining (or expanding) our options, and that conditions determine pretty much anything, leaving our agency down to our class and our side in class conflict down to our disposition, which is also down to material conditions as those will shape our experiences which shape ourselves. Is this close to making sense, or can someone explain it to me, or should I just get some sleep?

I think your remarks about free will are quite correct. I would only add that classless society gives more free will to the majority (greater choice) and gives less free will to the minority of bourgeoisie.

[Manic Impressive]

Free will is an illusion. How do we make decisions? We take our previous experiences and analyze the results, from this we determine the best course of action. Even if we contradict our usual response and take a different course of action we are still basing that decision on previous results or newly acquired knowledge.

Take for example the process of making a cup of tea. People usually follow one of two methods of making tea. There are 3 basic actions to making tea; Milk, tea bag and hot water. You can add them in any order but people will usually follow the same order, bag first then either water or milk next. They usually do this without conscious thought, it is routine. This routine has been in constant formation ever since they made their first cup of tea. And how did they make their first cup of tea? They were usually taught how to do it by someone else. Even though the memory of the event has long been forgotten by the conscious memory it remains in the unconscious. If they decide to break the routine they are also basing the decision to do so on previous experience. Experimentation is one of the first acts we ever make as young babies and something that human beings would not do well without.

The process for making any decision goes something like this.

Original knowledge (either being taught or through initial experimentation) > Acquired knowledge (what we have learned since through observation or theory) > Practical experience = Decision

[CyM]

For a simplificatkon, think of a cloud of gas. One cannot predict the exact behaviour of a single molecule, which is too chaotic to foretell. But we can relatively accurately predict the behaviour of the cloud of molecules as a whole.

Similarly with human beings. Each of us is free to act independently, but the aggregate of actions of all of us, society, economy, class struggle, history, has general tendencies and flows in ways that can be studied and more or less predicted (not down to dates, but we can predict the tendency in greece and europe is towards more intense social upheaval for the coming period for example).

I can't tell you what you'll be having for dinner, outside of telling you it won't be mammoth because it's dead or gold flaked peacock because you're not rich.

There are material conditions that set limits on you, or nudge you in certain directions, but you are a conscious being that makes choices within those limits. What choices you think are available is also limited by your conditions. Not many rebelling roman slaves thought of the abolition of slavery for example, but rather the enslavement of their owners by them.

You have free will, within the limitations set down by a certain stage of development of human society, economy, and class struggle.

[Hit The North]

Free will is an illusion. How do we make decisions? We take our previous experiences and analyze the results, from this we determine the best course of action. Even if we contradict our usual response and take a different course of action we are still basing that decision on previous results or newly acquired knowledge.

Take for example the process of making a cup of tea. People usually follow one of two methods of making tea. There are 3 basic actions to making tea; Milk, tea bag and hot water. You can add them in any order but people will usually follow the same order, bag first then either water or milk next. They usually do this without conscious thought, it is routine. This routine has been in constant formation ever since they made their first cup of tea. And how did they make their first cup of tea? They were usually taught how to do it by someone else. Even though the memory of the event has long been forgotten by the conscious memory it remains in the unconscious. If they decide to break the routine they are also basing the decision to do so on previous experience. Experimentation is one of the first acts we ever make as young babies and something that human beings would not do well without.

The process for making any decision goes something like this.

Original knowledge (either being taught or through initial experimentation) > Acquired knowledge (what we have learned since through observation or theory) > Practical experience = Decision

It strikes me that this does not illustrate the issue of free will or decision making. You are really outlining a technique for making tea which does not touch upon the decision to make the tea in the first place, or why tea is chosen over coffee or a glass of water.

The problem with this discussion so far is that no one seems to know what they mean by "will" whether free or not, or what the 'free will' is supposed to be free from.

[Manic Impressive]

It strikes me that this does not illustrate the issue of free will or decision making. You are really outlining a technique for making tea which does not touch upon the decision to make the tea in the first place, or why tea is chosen over coffee or a glass of water.
Oh fuck off you patronizing cock did I really upset you that much over the SWP stuff? Are you holding a grudge?

[Turinbaar]

Read Marx's Doctoral Dissertation on Epicurus. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm

Marx's analysis of Epicurus demonstrates that the assertion of free will (or "self-conciousness") against determinism is the basic principle of all things at all levels of existence. At the human level it is criticism of religion, politics and society, and the way these things treat humans as objects. Socialism is not socialism without free will.

[Yuppie Grinder]

AFAIK, Marxists, both authoritarian and libertarian, and almost all anarchists- are materialist, and thus determinist.

Yea, no. Materialism =/= Determinist.
The teleological, Hegelian young Marx can come off as determinist but older Materialist Marx is decidedly anti-determinist.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I haven't read a single convincing argument for either free will or determinism.

[Narcissus]

This isn't a common opinion (in fact as far as I know it is mine alone), but I think that given infinite precision, no two actions are identical, and therefore the same thing cannot happen twice despite the conditions leading to the action being identical.

Aided by chaos theory, these small differences can lead to large differences. Nothing is determined.

[CyM]

Chaos theory is exactly how this is resolved. Emergent phenomena: order out of chaos. There is both free will and determination. It is neither one nor the other alone.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Oh fuck off you patronizing cock did I really upset you that much over the SWP stuff? Are you holding a grudge?

I'm with you duder, but calling people cocks will only fuck you over.

[Jimmie Higgins]

No one's used the pithy Marx quote yet: men make history, but not under conditions of their choosing.

I can't give any definitive answer because I've never really looked into this question, but I'd guess that a materialist view would be that the material world forms the objective range of choices and possibilities but subjectivly humans do have agency (if that's what we mean by "will") over which course to take and how they understand or interpret their position and opportunities. Human agency was a big part of Marx's materialism so I don't really see these things as opposed.

[Comrade #138672]

I have always given this a lot of thought, but the more I thought about it, the less it made any sense. What is this so-called 'free will' and how does it work? What makes it free? Is it because it is not determined? And if it is undetermined, how can free will itself determine anything at all? The whole concept of free will seems self-contradictory and it only makes sense on a practical level, not on a metaphysical level.

Free will is always constrained, but what does it mean to do only what is physically possible? Does it mean that I can take the plane to some country instead of teleporting to it? What if I don't have any money? Does it stop being 'physically possible' then? It does not really mean that much.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Yeah um this is one of those perennial debates in philosophy and people who make strong assertions for either one without having read the literature seem naive at best. People who are strong determinists cannot ignore the obvious subjectivity of our deliberation about things while people who are strong free will advocates cannot ignore the obvious material framing of our choices, moods, desires etc. There are some cool philosophical arguments out there for strong determinism but rarely do I see people employing them.


I'm with you duder, but calling people cocks will only fuck you over.

Well, it is one thing cocks are good for.

[Ocean Seal]

This intense metaphysical conjecture is not within the realm of Marxist economic theory. Determinism is not a question answered by materialism. Materialism is merely about the sum total of men's actions and history itself. To make it anything more specific is to cheapen it.

[Hit The North]

Oh fuck off you patronizing cock did I really upset you that much over the SWP stuff? Are you holding a grudge?

You need to calm down. Why would your inconsequential babbling about the SWP upset me? I don't need to hold a grudge in order to point out that your attempt to resolve this conundrum of free will and determinism by reference to making a cup of tea is woefully inadequate.

How about you answer my objections instead?

[TiberiusGracchus]

AFAIK, Marxists, both authoritarian and libertarian, and almost all anarchists- are materialist, and thus determinist.

Mechanical materialism is determinist. Dialectical, emergentist materialism is not necessarily so.

I assume that the world is stratified and diverse, both horizontally (different forces operating side by side) and vertically (i.e. the level of biology being rooted in, but not reducible to the level of chemistry).

I also assume that operations on a higher level control the conditions under which the laws of the lower level applies. Ie. social structures like the market economy conditions the use of our productive forces, eg. machine technology which in turn conditions the effects of particular laws of physics.

The fact that higher levels work back upon lower levels - society on life, life on dead matter etc. - is an important argument for why the higher level cannot be reduced to the later and that we thus must say that it is emergent from the lower level in which it is rooted.

And if our world is a world where many events and things are ruled by a multitude of principles on different levels which cannot be reduced to eachother, then a free will in terms of intentional action according to rationality is in principle possible.

I also believe that we must see our reasons as causally effective causes if we are to understand why humans weight different opinions against eachother in order to decide how to act, and to be able to separate things that we do and things that happens to us. The difference between "catching a bus" and "catching a cold". (Also it makes no sense that we would have developed a perception of being able to make choices if we actually can't)

I believe that human freedom exists in this sense. We are able to act according to reasons. But this ability must be understood as something we possess as a property of emergent mechanisms that are, at least in principle, accessible to scientific studies.


Also these quotes suggests that Marx believed in free human activity:

"History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims."

and...

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."



So we are free (and not reducible to social structures as some structuralists tend to think) but not under free conditions. Communism will be a freer society because humans will be in more (but never total) control over their conditions.

[Zealot]

In The German Ideology Marx says something like "circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances."

[ComingUpForAir]

Sam Harris - Free Will.

I have watched that lecture 8 times and read his book twice.

You don't have free will, you have free choice. Understanding that distinction is critical. I spent 2 hours on a car ride trying to explain determinism to a friend once... determinism goes with marxism like religion and capitalism go with free will. With free will everything you do is your responsibility solely. With determinism, you are ultimately responsible, but only as a product. For example, we throw prisoners in jail if they do something violent because they are danger to society and becaue we have to hold them responsible as products. However, the material circumstances of existence, including genetics and prior action, intention, etc. make up the basis of existence. The conscious mind is merely a projection -- ultimately you are totally determined by your subconscious mind.. understanding the truth of determinism will liberate you from guilt, shame, pride.. it's as profound a truth as any.. and absolutely necessary in my view towards truly understanding dialectics and marxism.

[Futility Personified]

Interesting stuff people! Dissecting this bit by bit, thanks :)

[YouthLiberation]

I define free will as the ability to act on your desires, which doesn't neccesarly contradict determinism. I am a compatibilist.