Kantbros....I don't feel so good

the industrialization was forced by the fact that Russia's rivals were already industrialized, and already the Crimean War has shown that Russia needs to industrialize in order to compete, which is exactly why it started to industrialize. "blaming" historical facts is silly

>the state forced industrialization because gommunism required it
no, see pic. unless you thing the tsars were communists
>In either case the cause was the state forcing industrialization
no, that was the mediation. the cause was the development of capitalism. the capitalist economy has proven itself to be a superior economic basis for the state, which meant that states were necessarily driven to encourage its growth in order to expand their relative power.
>You can’t blame abstract made up “rivalries”
I don't blame them. you're the only one here who's keen on moralizing. I'm just explaining the causes of things. and if you think imperialist competition is abstract and made up, then maybe you should go back to European history books.
>for something individual humans did
no individual human can make a state industrialize. you think like a naive child if you really believe this.
>Funny how these “materialists” end up spouting platonic bullshit.
what's platonic about actual material conditions? the power of states is proportional to the power of their economic basis, so if there's a way for them to immensely expand this basis, they will pursue it. you can hardly get more materialist than this.

But in your own argument you’re just substituting abstractions like “rivalry” for “the state.” Both of these are way of grouping particulars and neither mode of analysis is particularly idealistic because, ideas such as “rivalry” or “state” can still be incorporated into a materialist schema if they are constructed only as ideas in the mind of particular subjects who use them as motives to enact physical change. The key is just whether you think these ideas are general forces acting from their own self-movement (Hegel) or whether they are abstractions made through induction (Marx), I.e. helpful analytic tools but not fundamental to reality.

>These are all ideas.
they are reflections in thought of real things
>You are saying that the state did not force industrialization, in fact these ideas did.
no, I'm saying that the state was caused to do so by real things of which those ideas are mental reflections of. I'm putting the emphasis on the scientific approach of finding explanations for things over stopping short of that in order to identify some intermediate entity in the causal link that has lead to it to "blame".
>The state is composed of individual humans
it's a set of relations between humans. you know what else is just that? capitalism or imperialist competition
>The state is an actual material thing.
if it is, then so are capitalism and imperialist competition
>Only the state could have forced industrialization.
this is semantics at this point. the important thing is explaining what has caused the state to do that instead of doing the opposite. stopping short of that in order to moralize and assign blame is thought-terminating.
>“Strength” and “rivalries” and “capitalism” were just platonic ideas in their heads that caused them to do it
you really need to stop using the word platonic
>That is the only sense in which they were causes.
we can apply your moronic and pointless method of bickering to your own argument: the actual people who forced industrialization were state functionaries executing the orders on the ground, and "state", "orders", "duty" were only "platonic ideas in their heads that caused them to do it", which is why "that is the only sense in which the state was the cause".
so where does this get us? nowhere. it's just worthless bickering.
the state functionaries executing its orders were acting under material constraints of the state reflected in their minds as ideas in the same way the members of the state's government were acting under material constraints of things such as the base economy of the state or the competition with other states.
that social processes unfold through the mediation of people getting ideas in their heads is going to be always true, so it can't be used to distinguish correct/actual explanations from incorrect/non-explanations.

pretty much, except for the Marxist part. because as long as USSR was socialist, it wasn't supposed to compete through capitalist development with other capitalist states but simply hold out for a few years until the revolution spread to some of the major already industrialized countries.
the return to the tsarist path of capitalist development for purposes of imperialist competition only happened with the Stalinist counter-revolution, which signified the abandonment of Marxism.

> what's platonic about actual material conditions?

The idea that there's some non-material rule/pattern that regulates the events of the material world and to which material conditions are subservient to is inherently idealist, so If X happens then Y happens can be interpreted as a platonic statement. Not that there's anything wrong with idealism, yet marxist perspectives specially prior to the 20th century used to dismiss idealist metaphysics.

>non-material rule/pattern
it's not non-material, it's made out of groups of people reproducing the means of their material existence
>so If X happens then Y happens can be interpreted as a platonic statement
lmao
>Not that there's anything wrong with idealism
yeah, if you define basic logic to be idealism, then "there's nothing wrong with idealism" becomes the understatement of the millennium. it's just that this moronic argument by definition is moronic. you can reason logically about material facts and remain within the realm of materialism.