Objective Interest

[Rugged Collectivist]

People on this board often talk about the objective interest of the working class, and how workers would be objectively better off under communism, but how can this be if interest is inherently subjective? Obviously this raises questions about the nature of concepts like class interest and false consciousness.

Any thoughts?

[Futility Personified]

I always figured that some interests were definitely objective. For example, one of my main gripes against capitalism would be the strain on mental health due to the numerous unavoidable stressors that make up daily life. It is objectively in someone's interest (because survival is a reasonable thing to indicate as necessary) to live in a system more amenable to positive mental health because that would give a better quality of life and make it less likely to pass on negative attributes to children.

[Tim Cornelis]

^The subjective assumption being that a better quality of life is desirable. It is conceivable that someone, for instance for strict religious reasons, wants no improvement in the quality of life. And therefore this person would subjectively say that people do not have an interest in that.

Interests are always subjective.

[Rugged Collectivist]

I always figured that some interests were definitely objective. For example, one of my main gripes against capitalism would be the strain on mental health due to the numerous unavoidable stressors that make up daily life. It is objectively in someone's interest (because survival is a reasonable thing to indicate as necessary) to live in a system more amenable to positive mental health because that would give a better quality of life and make it less likely to pass on negative attributes to children.

Why would you classify survival as a necessity?

I may be in everyone's interest to "live in a system more amenable to positive mental health", but what constitutes "positive mental health" is still very much up for debate.

[Rugged Collectivist]

^The subjective assumption being that a better quality of life is desirable. It is conceivable that someone, for instance for strict religious reasons, wants no improvement in the quality of life. And therefore this person would subjectively say that people do not have an interest in that.

Interests are always subjective.

I agree with this, but this hypothetical ascetic might argue that by sacrificing earthly desires, they are living a life that is more in tune with what god wants, and for them this may constitute a better quality life. Quality is also subjective.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

As far as I understand, Marxists talk about the material interest of the working classes, which some people call "objective" class interest, which pretty much avoids the "all interests are subjective" "problem", no?

[Rugged Collectivist]

As far as I understand, Marxists talk about the material interest of the working classes, which some people call "objective" class interest, which pretty much avoids the "all interests are subjective" "problem", no?

Yes! This is an important distinction. We ought to use this terminology instead.

Thanks.

[Futility Personified]

Survival to pass on genes. As far as I can understand, this would be "the point". You can have a passion or a dedication that you follow in your life and make that the purpose of your existence, but for the majority of our species, at this time, the purpose would be to reproduce. Which is to say, just exist for the sake of it. Some people don't seem to have a "what's the point" lens.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think many people on this thread are conflating interest with desire, purpose, what is seen as positive etc. But I urge people to pay attention to how we actually use the term "interest" - it is not the same as "purpose", people can and do want things that are against their interest and obviously people are called "self-interested", and this does not entail any sort of positive evaluation.

I don't see how interest is subjective - in fact there is broad agreement on what hurts people and what is pleasing or helpful to them, either as a biological organism or a member of society.

[Thirsty Crow]

People on this board often talk about the objective interest of the working class, and how workers would be objectively better off under communism, but how can this be if interest is inherently subjective? Obviously this raises questions about the nature of concepts like class interest and false consciousness.

Any thoughts?
The shortest answer to your question is - this cannot be so, and it isn't so as there isn't an object-like thing called "interest" apart from how specific people lead their lives. You're right insofar as interests need to be understood as either a) needs arising from the physiological constitution of human beings (what 870 claims about hurt) b) various historically specific and contigent desires and wants.

The precise problem is that the facile and unproductive, conventional Marxist take on this is that it avoids problems associated with particular people's articulation of wants and desires and action taken to that end, in favor of simply preaching to the choir about class traitors who're obviously blinded by bourgeois ideology to the deeper objective reality where something like a common interest exists independently of interacting people. If they only listened to enlightened intellectuals they would be able to see the light. As you can imagine, this is the general program of idealism in pretty much all of its variants as it rests on mystifying a very particular and limited set of articulated wants (or if you will, a social-political) as an underlying essence behind the multitude of particular experiences (which are then said to be illusory, mere "appearances"). Of course, this doesn't mean that this limited set of articulated wants and means to achieve them can't be generalized across a population (in case of communist politics, across the working class population and perhaps some really small sections of other social classes).

The remedy for this mistake is to admit that class interest is historically formed and "subjective" insofar as its articulation and status as effective force depends on concrete people facing concrete historical conditions. This also necessarily implies the rejection of the idea that the vanguard is to reveal the underlying "class interest" to workers who'd otherwise stumble in the dark. One hypothetical scenario that reveals all the absurdity of this position could be constructed like this: imagine a pre-revolutionary situation where a leading intelectual of the communiust vanguard confronts a group of workers and urges them to realize their true objective interest which just happens to be the overthrow of the bourgeois state and communist social transformation. The intelectual is greeted with doubt and fear on grounds of ideas that the bourgeois class will violently defend its hegemony. The workers conclude it's not really a good idea to risk their lives. What does the communist do? Conclude that such fear is the result of indoctrination or any conceivable defect of understanding objective class interest by workers themselves? If the communist does reach that kind of a conclusion, all the worse for them.

Anyway. I think it's high time to ditch this unintelligible notion.



I don't see how interest is subjective - in fact there is broad agreement on what hurts people and what is pleasing or helpful to them, either as a biological organism or a member of society.
This is mere wishful thinking when it comes to a postulated "broad agreement" on what is destructive for people as members of society. Anyway, even if there were (which is up for debate), the mere fact that nothing is done about it signals that we're not dealing with effective interest (with particularly determined avenues for its fulfillment, e.g. working class fightback as opposed to class fragmentation and people going for petite bourgeois entrpreneurial solutions - either legal or illegal).

The word isn't of course used only to denote what's harmful and what's productive from the perspective of biologically determined necessities of life. When it is used as in "It's not in your best interest to" it already presupposes a formed set of wants and even goals which cannot be said to be "objective" for the simple reason of this being a particular person's set of wants and goals (while it is entirely possible that many more people share one, many or even more elements of it).

And while we're at it, I don't even think terms like "subjective" and "objective" are productive here. They seem to create more confusion than clarity. Obviously the kinds of judgement they distinguish from - e.g. objective judgement as statements of how things are as opposed to subjhective judgement as statement of (yet unchecked) belief or statements of enjoyment and assigning value (e.g. cultural artefacts) - are in need to be distinguished. But apart from this simple aspect I don't see a use for them.

[Redistribute the Rep]

Yes! This is an important distinction. We ought to use this terminology instead.

Thanks.

Don't we already use this terminology?

[Thirsty Crow]

Don't we already use this terminology?
Yes but it doesn't make any more sense than that of objective interest since it functions pretty much the same way as far as I know (also because it's often assumed that to say "material" is synonymous with saying "objective", up to the point where people like Lenin, in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, claim that the sole important property of matter is that it exists "objectively", that is, outside a particular thinking mind).

[Rafiq]

It is not as though class interest lurks within the hearts of workers, subconsciously or otherwise and simply has to be "brought out". Communism formed as a result of the class interests of proletarians. Not the other way around. I think it is important, however, to recognize that yes as a social class the proletariat is capable of acting as a class without thorough theoretical depth. The problem is that this usually does not last very long without a general theoretical discipline.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Survival to pass on genes. As far as I can understand, this would be "the point". You can have a passion or a dedication that you follow in your life and make that the purpose of your existence, but for the majority of our species, at this time, the purpose would be to reproduce. Which is to say, just exist for the sake of it. Some people don't seem to have a "what's the point" lens.

I don't buy that argument. If humans had an innate instinct that told them to pass on their genes there wouldn't be so many people who don't want children. Especially since this urge is presumably genetic and those with the "I don't want children" gene should have died off years ago for obvious reasons.


I think many people on this thread are conflating interest with desire, purpose, what is seen as positive etc. But I urge people to pay attention to how we actually use the term "interest" - it is not the same as "purpose", people can and do want things that are against their interest and obviously people are called "self-interested", and this does not entail any sort of positive evaluation.

Who can decide what goes against a person's interests better than the person themselves?


I don't see how interest is subjective - in fact there is broad agreement on what hurts people and what is pleasing or helpful to them, either as a biological organism or a member of society.I don't think it's as broad as you think it is.


Don't we already use this terminology?

Sometimes. I've heard people say objective too. I think material should be used for the sake of clarity.


Yes but it doesn't make any more sense than that of objective interest since it functions pretty much the same way as far as I know (also because it's often assumed that to say "material" is synonymous with saying "objective", up to the point where people like Lenin, in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, claim that the sole important property of matter is that it exists "objectively", that is, outside a particular thinking mind).

I think it takes on a different meaning when talking about interest. Material interest means that which would benefit you materially. Almost all workers would be better off materially (they would have more access to goods) under communism then they are under capitalism. This is true whether they accept it or not. But even if they did, they might not value material positions as much as something else, and thus, it wouldn't be objective because they would view it as contrary to their interests.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think it takes on a different meaning when talking about interest. Material interest means that which would benefit you materially. Almost all workers would be better off materially (they would have more access to goods) under communism then they are under capitalism. This is true whether they accept it or not. But even if they did, they might not value material positions as much as something else, and thus, it wouldn't be objective because they would view it as contrary to their interests.
Okay, point taken. The notion of material interest is more specific, that much is clear.
But this doesn't resolve the problem introduced by the more general notion of objective interest, which centers around the relationship of effective and articulated interest and the abstract "interest" as somehow objective and common to all workers (with the only problem of bringing them to realizing it).

[Rugged Collectivist]

Okay, point taken. The notion of material interest is more specific, that much is clear.
But this doesn't resolve the problem introduced by the more general notion of objective interest, which centers around the relationship of effective and articulated interest and the abstract "interest" as somehow objective and common to all workers (with the only problem of bringing them to realizing it).

But that's what I was arguing against.

[Thirsty Crow]

But that's what I was arguing against.
I know you were, but I think the terminological shift you propose won't be an effective means in arguing against that as it is likely that the notion of "material interest" would be assimilated to that traditional, conventional way Marxists have thought about these problems.

[TC]

It seems to me that there is no "objective interest" where objectivity is divorced from perspective dependent subjective experience.

However some interests though contingent on subjective experience are nonetheless widely shared or they arise from features universal or highly common to all people or all people of a particular class.

For example, there is no perspective-neutral objective interest in the avoidance of substantial physical pain. However, part of the way human minds are embodied is such that all (or nearly all) humans have a shared subjective interest in the minimization of substantial physical pain. From a human-experience-informed outside perspective, we can infer that any given set of persons will have an interest in substantial pain avoidance (even if that interest is sometimes counter-balanced by other interests that those people hold to be of higher import - it is still one interest they have even if it is not the only interest they have).

But to a rock, there would be no interest in pain avoidance, and from the standpoint of 'the universe' disinterested in people's mental states, it wouldn't make a difference.

In this sense there is no 'strong' objectivity but it is nonetheless possible to speak of a thin sort of quasi-objectivity - one that must be checked and is often flawed when interests are mistaken.

Of course subjective interests are also highly complex.

[Redistribute the Rep]

I don't buy that argument. If humans had an innate instinct that told them to pass on their genes there wouldn't be so many people who don't want children. Especially since this urge is presumably genetic and those with the "I don't want children" gene should have died off years ago for obvious reasons.

Well first of all, it's not necessarily genetic that some humans don't want kids. And even if it is in part genetic, genes don't just 'die out' they can be recessive and people can be carriers for them without expressing the gene. Take Tay Sachs syndrome for example, children with it die by the age of four and so obviously cannot pass on their genes. The gene has yet to 'die out' as you put it.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The shortest answer to your question is - this cannot be so, and it isn't so as there isn't an object-like thing called "interest" apart from how specific people lead their lives. You're right insofar as interests need to be understood as either a) needs arising from the physiological constitution of human beings (what 870 claims about hurt) b) various historically specific and contigent desires and wants.

The precise problem is that the facile and unproductive, conventional Marxist take on this is that it avoids problems associated with particular people's articulation of wants and desires and action taken to that end, in favor of simply preaching to the choir about class traitors who're obviously blinded by bourgeois ideology to the deeper objective reality where something like a common interest exists independently of interacting people. If they only listened to enlightened intellectuals they would be able to see the light. As you can imagine, this is the general program of idealism in pretty much all of its variants as it rests on mystifying a very particular and limited set of articulated wants (or if you will, a social-political) as an underlying essence behind the multitude of particular experiences (which are then said to be illusory, mere "appearances"). Of course, this doesn't mean that this limited set of articulated wants and means to achieve them can't be generalized across a population (in case of communist politics, across the working class population and perhaps some really small sections of other social classes).

The remedy for this mistake is to admit that class interest is historically formed and "subjective" insofar as its articulation and status as effective force depends on concrete people facing concrete historical conditions. This also necessarily implies the rejection of the idea that the vanguard is to reveal the underlying "class interest" to workers who'd otherwise stumble in the dark. One hypothetical scenario that reveals all the absurdity of this position could be constructed like this: imagine a pre-revolutionary situation where a leading intelectual of the communiust vanguard confronts a group of workers and urges them to realize their true objective interest which just happens to be the overthrow of the bourgeois state and communist social transformation. The intelectual is greeted with doubt and fear on grounds of ideas that the bourgeois class will violently defend its hegemony. The workers conclude it's not really a good idea to risk their lives. What does the communist do? Conclude that such fear is the result of indoctrination or any conceivable defect of understanding objective class interest by workers themselves? If the communist does reach that kind of a conclusion, all the worse for them.

Anyway. I think it's high time to ditch this unintelligible notion.

[...]

This is mere wishful thinking when it comes to a postulated "broad agreement" on what is destructive for people as members of society. Anyway, even if there were (which is up for debate), the mere fact that nothing is done about it signals that we're not dealing with effective interest (with particularly determined avenues for its fulfillment, e.g. working class fightback as opposed to class fragmentation and people going for petite bourgeois entrpreneurial solutions - either legal or illegal).

The word isn't of course used only to denote what's harmful and what's productive from the perspective of biologically determined necessities of life. When it is used as in "It's not in your best interest to" it already presupposes a formed set of wants and even goals which cannot be said to be "objective" for the simple reason of this being a particular person's set of wants and goals (while it is entirely possible that many more people share one, many or even more elements of it).

And while we're at it, I don't even think terms like "subjective" and "objective" are productive here. They seem to create more confusion than clarity. Obviously the kinds of judgement they distinguish from - e.g. objective judgement as statements of how things are as opposed to subjhective judgement as statement of (yet unchecked) belief or statements of enjoyment and assigning value (e.g. cultural artefacts) - are in need to be distinguished. But apart from this simple aspect I don't see a use for them.

I don't think this is fair at all. Communists don't need to tell the workers what their interests are - the workers already know that. I don't think you will find many workers who think being impoverished and starving is in their interest, unless they believe in some sort of heavenly gendarme who wants them to be impoverished and starving, which is simply a matter of having incorrect, unscientific beliefs. What bourgeois ideology does is, it convinces workers that there is no alternative. Class consciousness isn't about the workers recognising that, cor, all that starvation and easily-preventable disease really weren't in their class interest, but the struggling proletariat coming into awareness of the possibility of communism, and its historical role of destroying class society.

The rest of the post, I think, relies on a very peculiar notion of objectivity. Of course interest is not something that floats in the ether, but is formed by concrete human circumstances (and of course rocks don't have an interest) and interactions. The same goes for society in general. But neither is subjective in the sense that I can say society is whatever I please it is, and the same goes for interest. I don't think harm is really a completely physiological notion, by the way. There are things that mildly hurt us in a purely physiological sense, but that are not odious to us. It's not really cut-and-dry - what is, in life? - but I think most people can recognise the difference between an eclair or a light spanking and, say, killing yourself via autoerotic asphyxiation (which is not to say that the latter is "wrong", somehow, I don't think the recognition of interest implies any sort of moral malarkey; we talk about class interest, not because we think that people should follow their class interest but because as a matter of fact most people want to, even if they don't recognise it as a class interest).

[Thirsty Crow]

I don't think this is fair at all. Communists don't need to tell the workers what their interests are - the workers already know that. I don't think you will find many workers who think being impoverished and starving is in their interest, unless they believe in some sort of heavenly gendarme who wants them to be impoverished and starving, which is simply a matter of having incorrect, unscientific beliefs. What bourgeois ideology does is, it convinces workers that there is no alternative. Class consciousness isn't about the workers recognising that, cor, all that starvation and easily-preventable disease really weren't in their class interest, but the struggling proletariat coming into awareness of the possibility of communism, and its historical role of destroying class society.

The rest of the post, I think, relies on a very peculiar notion of objectivity. Of course interest is not something that floats in the ether, but is formed by concrete human circumstances (and of course rocks don't have an interest) and interactions. The same goes for society in general. But neither is subjective in the sense that I can say society is whatever I please it is, and the same goes for interest. I don't think harm is really a completely physiological notion, by the way. There are things that mildly hurt us in a purely physiological sense, but that are not odious to us. It's not really cut-and-dry - what is, in life? - but I think most people can recognise the difference between an eclair or a light spanking and, say, killing yourself via autoerotic asphyxiation (which is not to say that the latter is "wrong", somehow, I don't think the recognition of interest implies any sort of moral malarkey; we talk about class interest, not because we think that people should follow their class interest but because as a matter of fact most people want to, even if they don't recognise it as a class interest).

Okay, there are at least two sets of problems here.

You claim that communists don't need to tell the workers what their interests are; and I agree. But the fact remains that social revolution and communist transformation have been argued for in terms of objective class interest. Communists have told workers' what their interest was, or at least about the only possible ways of realizing it. This amounts to claiming that irrespective of articulated points to the contrary, it is some kind of "interest" existing out there which the workers should realize, and its content is in short communism. The issue is not that banal so that we conclude it's not in the best of our interest to aim for impoverishment and so on; it's about the historical psychological-social formation of needs and wants and the ways of achieving them (also about what those ways entail, as I was aiming to show with the hypothetical example I provided).

This is the way communists (of course, not all of them) have dealt with problems in interacting with other workers, especially at socially and politically turbulent times. Another term which is very close is that of the historic mission of the proletariat, and I claim there's no such thing and that this is mere obfuscatory rhetoric.

So, the issue here is how communists relate to workers with whom their in significant disagreement. The idea of false consciousness is also raised here.

The second problem is what I think is your peculiar way of understanding how the word "subjective" can be used meaningfully. The sense you mention which supposedly enables one to say whatever the hell they want isn't the way it is normally used; we have another expression to cover that, it's called "bullshit". So the problem isn't subjective = idiosyncratic and fundamentally disconnected from the way things are. Not at all as the sensible way to talk about things includes judgement which isn't empirical, for example judgement of taste which is necessarily "subjective" as an expression of what one likes.

But if your argument would hold then we wouldn't in any way be able to meaningfully talk about subjective judgement and attitudes since the whole thing is illusory in the first place (or better yet, since the word denotes a process which is necessarily detached from our common world).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Okay, there are at least two sets of problems here.

You claim that communists don't need to tell the workers what their interests are; and I agree. But the fact remains that social revolution and communist transformation have been argued for in terms of objective class interest. Communists have told workers' what their interest was, or at least about the only possible ways of realizing it. This amounts to claiming that irrespective of articulated points to the contrary, it is some kind of "interest" existing out there which the workers should realize, and its content is in short communism. The issue is not that banal so that we conclude it's not in the best of our interest to aim for impoverishment and so on; it's about the historical psychological-social formation of needs and wants and the ways of achieving them (also about what those ways entail, as I was aiming to show with the hypothetical example I provided).

This is the way communists (of course, not all of them) have dealt with problems in interacting with other workers, especially at socially and politically turbulent times. Another term which is very close is that of the historic mission of the proletariat, and I claim there's no such thing and that this is mere obfuscatory rhetoric.

So, the issue here is how communists relate to workers with whom their in significant disagreement. The idea of false consciousness is also raised here.

The second problem is what I think is your peculiar way of understanding how the word "subjective" can be used meaningfully. The sense you mention which supposedly enables one to say whatever the hell they want isn't the way it is normally used; we have another expression to cover that, it's called "bullshit". So the problem isn't subjective = idiosyncratic and fundamentally disconnected from the way things are. Not at all as the sensible way to talk about things includes judgement which isn't empirical, for example judgement of taste which is necessarily "subjective" as an expression of what one likes.

But if your argument would hold then we wouldn't in any way be able to meaningfully talk about subjective judgement and attitudes since the whole thing is illusory in the first place (or better yet, since the word denotes a process which is necessarily detached from our common world).

I think there is quite a difference between telling someone what their interests are, and explaining how that interest can best be realised. And yes, this does mean that the communist upholds communism even if the workers do not - to me this is what distinguishes the communist from the tailist.

I don't know why so many communists are ashamed of being communists. Marxism works, as an explanation of the social world and more importantly, as a guide to revolutionary action. Yet in the last few years, an increasing number of people seem willing to replace Marxist analysis and propaganda with a weird sort of pseudo-political etiquette - "listening to" group X, Y, Z. Well if the young communist movement simply "listened to the workers", they would have upheld the bizarre theocratic authoritarianism of Weitling, not the scientific approach of Marx.

As for the historic mission of the proletariat, it might be an unfortunate phrase, but it denotes a scientific truth: capitalism can only end in socialism or barbarism, and only the proletariat has the social power to bring socialism about.

Now, as for the term "subjective", I take it we are in broad agreement that taste is subjective? But that means precisely that I can make whatever judgment of taste I want, and no one can demonstrate that I'm wrong (in fact I don't know what being wrong about taste would even entail). That doesn't mean that nothing interesting can be said about statements of taste. Obviously when I make a story up, I can say whatever I please, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss storytelling.