“Materialism is the recognition of ‘objects in themselves’, or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies or images of those objects. The opposite doctrine (idealism) claims that objects do not exist ‘without the mind’; objects are ‘combinations of sensations’”.
– Vladimir Lenin, Materialism and Empirico-criticism
1. O’ comrade, if we are Marxist-Leninist, or, coming from another direction, nevertheless, desire a dictatorship of the proletariat, we must confront our death, because our struggle is a revolutionary struggle to substitute a proletarian state for the bourgeois state. The bourgeois state, however, is equipped with the means to deprive us of our life and, when our revolutionary struggle against the bourgeois state has come to its climax, our enemy would not hesitate to deploy those means. How are we to persist in our struggle against the bourgeois state when the guns are loaded not with “non-lethal” but live ammunition, aimed not at our feet or chest but our heads, and our comrades and ourselves alike cannot venture outside without risk of death at the hands of the police, fascist paramilitaries, and so forth? We must confront our death in advance.
2. Materialism must be “existentialized”. The external world it asserts must not be any world other than the world which remains after our death, that is also to say, the world we leave behind. Of course, we already acknowledge the existence of this world everyday, but we speak of this world casually. We entertain fantasies of what would happen in this world by ourselves or through scientific speculations and fictions. We rarely, if ever, however, grasp the gravity of this world and our death.
3. This world is the world where we leave behind our legacy. Our activities in life produce changes which outlast us. Their consequences continue to unfold beyond our death. What legacy, precisely, we leave behind, however, is always an uncertainty. How others would recall our life, interpret the activities we engage in in life, and so forth, can never be verified by us in person. Hence, every thought we have of the world after our death, as far as we are concerned, is a thought and nothing else. We cannot establish any similitude or difference between our thought of the world after our death and the world after our death.
4. As soon as we realize so, an idealism also rears its head. We have discovered the world has always been a world united with us in our activities, e.g. observation, contemplation, imagination, and other activities which actively produce changes in objects of the world. It, or, rather, the objects in this world, are our objects, observed, contemplated, imagined, and transformed by us.
5. Our activities are also driven by our desires. Activities of ours, which transform objects in the world, do so in order to satisfy some desires of ours, e.g. we bite into an apple to satisfy our hunger. We also observe and contemplate not for the sake of observation and contemplation alone. We do so in order to plan for other, more practical activities which would transform the objects we observe and contemplate. Likewise, we do not imagine for the sake of imagination alone. Our imagination paves the way for more practical activities. Desires drive our activities, which unite us with objects in the world. A worldview emerges which is centered on ourselves, our activities, and our desires.
6. This worldview is the worldview we operate by. It is the worldview, or, more precisely, a practical idealism, our desires prescribe for our actions, but until now we have followed this worldview unconsciously. Our consciousness so far has been materialist, acknowledged the continuation of the world after our death, and, even, every now and again, contemplated the legacy we would leave behind, but we have now discovered this legacy and the world after our death, within which we leave behind our legacy, have always been figments of our imagination. This imagination is, furthermore, driven by desires of ours, which, evidently, become unsatisfiable on our death. These desires, if they, genuinely, aim to acquire us objects in the world after our death, desire in vain.
7. Our life is self-contradictory. We are materialist in our consciousness, but idealist in our actions. Until now, however, we have only been practical idealists unconsciously. Our consciousness was thoroughly materialist and found the suggestion the world after us is anything other than a reality nonsensical. Our practical idealism has, however, come into our consciousness now. Its secret conflict with our materialist consciousness has become an open conflict.
8. This conflict is, for the most parts, resolved to the benefit of idealism, as we abandon every thought of our legacy and the world after our death to fully enjoy our life. We would find, however, upon closer examination of this idealism, that it is not as straightforwardly egoistic as it seems at first glance. We have already seen that our imagination of our legacy and of the world after our death is driven by a desires of ours. These desires, if they genuinely desire objects in the world after our death, i.e. to leave behind a legacy in this world, must desire in vain, but, regardless, they desire. What do they desire? The answer can be found through an analysis of our life.
9. Our life is not any life but a life in society, where we are assigned various social identities by the other, e.g. as a child of this family, a worker or capitalist, a subject of this state, a member of this nation, and so forth. We are assigned social identities by the other, but we express these social identities through simple declarative statements, “I am …”, which define ourselves without any qualification, i.e. they are not “I do … and, therefore, I am, or, rather, become …”. They define, in effect, our essence, i.e. the being whom we are in ourselves.
10. At the same time, insofar as we are assigned our social identities by the other, we always declare we are our social identities in response to the other. We do so to win the other’s favor, avoid being hated by the other, and so forth. We are conscious of this response we make to the other and, more importantly, of the fact that the content of this response, “I am …”, does not exist in a void, but in this response, expressed by this response in order to satisfy the desire which drives this response, i.e. the desire to win the other’s favor, to avoid being hated by the other, and so forth.
11. Hence, we are our social identities. At the same time, we are not. Or, more precisely, we are not our social identities in ourselves, but so for ourselves and the other, in our definition of ourselves as our social identities in our response to the other. We are always “dislocated” from our social identities.
12. The question must arise, however, why we embrace the social identities assigned us by the other so readily. For one, any parent has experienced the struggle of getting their infant child to respond to their name. They have also experienced the struggle of getting their infant child to call them “papa”, “mama”, or other variations of family titles. The infant child’s name, “papa”, “mama”, and so forth, are not neutral names but social names which designate for the child as well as the parents their respective positions in society. This is the clearest when the infant child mistakenly calls themselves “papa” or “mama”. Their parents would, immediately, correct them, because “papa” and “mama” do not designate the child’s position in society but their parents’.
13. Why do, or, rather, did, we so readily embrace the social identities assigned us by our parents and other caretakers as our own? Idealistically and, therefore, locating the cause of this behavior in our mind, we may answer, “Because we wanted to be those social identities”. In other words, we desired to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by our caretakers.
14. As soon as we responded to our parents by affirming we are, indeed, the social identities they have assigned us, however, we became “dislocated” from these social identities. We were conscious of the fact that we were defining ourselves in response to our parents and, therefore, also of the fact that we are not, in ourselves, our social identities but so for ourselves and the other.
15. If we desire a more material foundation for our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by our caretakers, we need only consider our physical instinct to live. In the first place, we desire only to live, but, as infants, we are entirely dependent on the care of our parents and other caretakers for our survival. The care they provide, however, is not simple care, but care intermixed with lessons in our social identities and behaviors proper and improper to our social identities. Proper behaviors are rewarded with food, attention, and so forth. Improper behaviors are punished or corrected by gentler means. The result of this care is the transformation of our physical instinct to live into our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities our caretakers have assigned us.
16. This desire is absolutely dissatisfied. We are our social identities. We are not our social identities in ourselves, but so for ourselves and the other. Our desire can never be satisfied, but, nevertheless, as a desire, it drives us to produce the condition for its satisfaction. The condition for its satisfaction is nothing other than our death. We cannot become, in ourselves, our social identities, because we are a being who embraces social identities assigned us by the other as our own, and who, therefore, are the social identities for ourselves and the other, never in ourselves. Hence, our desire to become, in ourselves, our social identities can only be satisfied through our death. Our physical instinct to live has, therefore, also been transformed into our “death drive”.
17. Our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by the other desires in vain. Vainly it also imagines the impossible future when it is satisfied. This future cannot be any future other than the world after our death, because this desire seeks its satisfaction through our death. The external world, or the world after our death, is a figment of our imagination. It is the product of an imagination our desire necessarily engages in in the course of its vain efforts to satisfy itself through our death.
18. Our practical idealism has come to the fore. It has come to the fore as a worldview which is centered not only on ourselves, our activities, and our desires, but also, more importantly, on our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by the other, especially our parents and other caretakers, and the absolute dissatisfaction of this desire. The external world, or the world after our death, is produced by this desire as its impossible dream of its satisfaction. This desire, or, rather, the practical idealism centered on this desire, openly clashes with our materialist consciousness, for which the world does, genuinely, remain after our death.
19. A resolution to this conflict, however, has also emerged which leans towards idealism, but not a vulgar, egoistic idealism which abandons every thought of our legacy and the world after our death. Rather, this resolution leans towards a more developed idealism, which has discovered within ourselves our “death drive”. This resolution embraces this “death drive”, or our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by our parents. Hence, once again, our mind and body become preoccupied with our legacy and the world after our death. This time, however, our mind and body become preoccupied with our legacy and the world after our death theoretically as well as practically. We choose to practice our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by the other, and follow the doomed course of this desire’s efforts to satisfy itself through our death. We choose our death as the logical end of our desire to become, in ourselves, the social identities assigned us by the other, and must now decide how we would die and what legacy we would leave behind.
20. Our analysis thus far has been abstract. We must now complete our analysis by analyzing our life concretely and determining the particular shape of the desire which drives our revolutionary struggle against the bourgeois state. We must determine the particular social identities we desire to become in ourselves and the particular others who assigned us the social identities. This part of our analysis must be completed by ourselves or with comrades we trust with our most secret desires.
21. When we have completed our analysis and discovered the particular desire which drives our revolutionary struggle against the bourgeois state, we must practice this desire and follow the doomed course of this desire to satisfy itself to its logical end. In other words, fight, though it may cost us our life, and, on our death, pave the way forward for our comrades, because this is our desire.
I will see you on the streets.