After the End of History: The Curious Fate of American Materialism

Spanakopita Three: What’s Wrong with Materialism?

Spanakopita Three What’s Wrong with Materialism? Adam entered the restaurant angry. He had been thinking about Dessie’s high moral tone in attacking materialism, as though he was dealing with an ethical norm, like virtue, that could or should be justi‹ed as its own reward. “Materialism must be judged by its consequences,” he said, “and not as a virtue or a vice in itself. It’s not just your dinner that’s at stake but the whole market system that has brought us so far.” He sighed. “Capitalism without a pro‹t motive?” he asked in a state of selfpropelled indignation. “We’ll get to that,” said Dessie, who had entered through the back door. “In a profound sense, neither of us knows what materialism means. I have a friend, Ed Lindblom, who won’t talk to me about materialism because he says it’s too vague a topic.” “Smart fellow, that Lindblom,” said Adam, “even though he is not wholly sound on neoclassical economics.” “So when confronted by a vague concept, you don’t just abandon it; you clarify the meaning of the concept. If necessary you assert yourself against the word, as Humpty Dumpty suggested.” “You’ll get egg on your face,” muttered Adam. “De‹nitions are useful only when they shed light on what you want to do or talk about,” said Dessie pompously. “Although I mentioned last time the cosmic battle between materialism and humanism, we are not really battling over spiritualism or the dominance of the senses1 or evolution as a materialist system or the mind-body problem and its increas41 ingly important brain-mind aspects.” Dessie paused to change perspective . “By the way, even the mind-body problem has a left-right dimension . “‘Scienti‹c psychology,’ said Lenin, must ‘set about making a direct study of the material substratum of psychical events—the nervous system .’ He claimed that any mentalistic emphasis represented a ‘confused idealist position.’”2 “You do know that E. O. Wilson, the creator of sociobiology,3 was attacked by lefties as a rightist social Darwinist,” said Adam with an amused air of scorn at this social science nonsense. Dessie let it go. “In a minor way, I suppose we are talking about the moving forces of history—dialectical materialism and all that—but only tangentially. Do you agree that the interesting problems on the table, along with the soup and spinach pie, are the values that people hold and the motives that drive them? Adam had not been thinking about the agenda for today’s discussion, so he promptly agreed. It was only just the other day that he had come to think of economists as “materialists,” though he was willing to accept that term as long as it was not loaded with either metaphysical nonsense or implications of uncivilized vulgarity. “This is only tentative,” said Dessie, feeling his way, “but I think materialist or idealistic interpretations of history are more or less irrelevant to the interpretation of the motives and values of participants in history , don’t you? I mean, materialist interpretations of history do not require avaricious actors but do require changes in the productive system of the society, just as idealistic interpretations do not require deep thinkers—only powerful thoughts that ‹t the changing cultures of the time.” “I agree,” said Adam, relieved that Dessie was not going to psychologize history. “Mental sets (cultures) do in›uence which of the many environmental changes people will see and respond to; in that sense, I am an idealist. But the stimulus to change is more likely to be circumstantial. As Marx and Engels said, ‘Does it require deep intuition, to comprehend that man’s ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?’4 In a way, that is the very basis of my belief in the immanence of the New Humanism. But when you reverse that and make economic motives of the public the moving force of economics, you have vulgar Marxism.” “That’s only a phrase—and not even Marx’s phrase,” said Adam. “For example, I found persuasive John Hicks’s economic history showAfter the End of History 42 ing the way in which the search for economic security caused civilizations to change their institutions and adapt to new situations.5 Who...