If you don’t think the configuration of material objects in relation to one another is a material phenomenon then I have no idea what is.
As for when people talk about social relations people they are talking about materials things! It’s just when you have highly complex repeating and interrelated patterns in the way in which matter is arranged it’s easier to think only about the relevant information.
To go back to my chair example. Quarks and leptons and other subatomic particles are interacting to create atoms which are structured into highly complex molecules which form the basis of a cells which were assembled into what was once part of a large organism. That organism was split into pieces and reassembled into an object you can sit on. A simple chair is so complex in fact that we can’t even conceive of all the specific information embedded within any given chair. That does not mean the idea of a chair is meaningless. It just means our minds have produced a highly simplified reflection of what a chair is in order to direct the way our material bodies interact with it.
Capitalism is the same way. It is manifest in the material world. It is a consequence of the ways in which matter interacts. The concept of capitalism as it exists in our heads is just a highly simplified material reflection of the material phenomenon itself.
This is such a critical point in Marxism. It’s why dialectical materialism is not a positivist phenomenon. We can never truly know everything about a material object as long as the information embedded within said object is more complex than our brains can mirror. If that’s true then as the world changes our ideas must change with it and indeed they do! That’s the dialectical process in action.
If you don’t think the configuration of material objects in relation to one another is a material phenomenon then I have no idea what is.
As for when people talk about social relations people they are talking about materials things! It’s just when you have highly complex repeating and interrelated patterns in the way in which matter is arranged it’s easier to think only about the relevant information.
To go back to my chair example. Quarks and leptons and other subatomic particles are interacting to create atoms which are structured into highly complex molecules which form the basis of a cells which were assembled into what was once part of a large organism. That organism was split into pieces and reassembled into an object you can sit on. A simple chair is so complex in fact that we can’t even conceive of all the specific information embedded within any given chair. That does not mean the idea of a chair is meaningless. It just means our minds have produced a highly simplified reflection of what a chair is in order to direct the way our material bodies interact with it.
Capitalism is the same way. It is manifest in the material world. It is a consequence of the ways in which matter interacts. The concept of capitalism as it exists in our heads is just a highly simplified material reflection of the material phenomenon itself.
This is such a critical point in Marxism. It’s why dialectical materialism is not a positivist phenomenon. We can never truly know everything about a material object as long as the information embedded within said object is more complex than our brains can mirror. If that’s true then as the world changes our ideas must change with it and indeed they do! That’s the dialectical process in action.