Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
I don't have any problem with historical materialism and believe it's probably mostly right on the money. It's not, however, something we can really verify.
You can say "changes in the mode of production in the late modern period of proto-industrialization caused the liberal revolutions of the 18th-19th century and their attendant changes in ideology and governmental structure." But you could also say "Ideas of the early Englightenment caused intellectual foment in the 18th-19th century, leading to innovation in economic organization and the reconsidering of political structures."
How do we adjudicate these claims? And even if we can prove the materialist interpretation for this particular case, does that generalize to proving materialism is the driving force of history everywhere? It sure seems like the ideas of some figures (take Jesus Christ) were pretty influential to later history, not just the type of slave plantation and tax farming system they were using in 1st century BC Rome.
Likewise, even if we eventually find a ton of evidence that lots of billionaires were cynically pushing idpol, there will inevitably be cases where idpol was pushed from sincere belief. How many examples of the first prove the model? How many counterexamples of the second disprove the model?
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