regular poke but   ral.bsky.social/post/3lbksywvptc2x this goes both ways though. yes, there's a retarded interpretation where pretenders to an "old left" argue authentic materialism is just the financialized abstraction mentioned here (more clever ones are able to reconcile it through liberal use of the word "commodification"). even here on the right i can see that's wrong because i've read the idiot books but there's still a sidling in of idealism when, on the other hand, there's this overemphasis on intangible, maybe even transcendental concepts like "empathy" and "morality" that have priority over other considerations. see how many on the left argue about sacrificing anything for "the economy." hell, let's take the current eggs maymay about inflation. inflation was a very real thing that happened, people's conceptions of it might be exaggerated, their explanations for why faulty, but it very much did happen, it was a real loss of quality of life for people, and there has been a shitton of dismissal of this concern as irrelevant in the face of stuff like women's or gay culture war issues. sure, those issues can also be very material even in the above commodity sense, but the justifications are rarely based on that, but instead appeals to "humanity" and "empathy" and "morals." you can attempt to reconcile this with moral realism arguments, but even that is an ideal, isn't it? and it's not a necessary minimum one at that, except by some assumed criterion of minimum (which also qualifies as another ideal). this insincerity about "materialism" as justification is reflected in how people are mocking what qualifies as directly material (concern over egg prices) as a fake concern. all explanations about inflation (causes, future trends) aside, the "marxists" frequently have mocked people for caring about the price of food, while then making an argument about material interests governing people's lives and behaviors
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