this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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You reading theory and telling it to other people is changing material conditions. That's dialectics baby.
I disagree that it's changing MATERIAL conditions. It's changing discourse perhaps.
You need to learn more about dialectics and the way that humans create new material conditions out of the creative application of our knowledge and thoughts (the dialectic of theory and practice, the self-actualisation of humanity). Learning political theory and teaching it to other people demonstrably changes the material conditions we live in. If you don't think that is the case, you have a very flimsy understanding of the material.
My understanding of Marx is that economic conditions must change first, then society adapts to it. By conditions here I mean things like climate, war, famine, and technological progress. I don't think people reading is going to change anything.
By now everyone knows that America is committing a genocide in gaza, but Americans keep going to work. If something like genocide can't change the course of society, how am I supposed to believe that a few people reading theory will change anything?
Theory can be applied once people are forced to change. So it definitely has it's place.
If I'm actually wrong please direct me to what Marx or Lenin said about theory changing material conditions.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/law-abs.htm - Marx
To get a better understanding of dialectics and dialectical materialism you can read the CPV's curriculum of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism:
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Curriculum_of_the_Basic_Principles_of_Marxism-Leninism_Part_1