First, I agree that pragmatic focus is important, and that Maslow's hierarchy of needs, though not perfect, is a good rough guideline. But as for materialism, there is big difference between Marx' pragmatic and ethical dialectical materialism and the metaphysical mechanistic materialism of positivism/naive physicalism - which is not pragmatic ethical philosophy but a metaphysical ideology which fetishizes measurability and countability ("control mania"
by process of historical dialectics. It seems obvious that there is close connection between metaphysical materialism and commodity fetish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism).
Needless to say also the Communist party elites have constantly fallen into the trap of metaphysical materialism and technocratic and bureaucratic control mania of commodity fetishism, which may be seemingly effective as destructive imperialistic force, but only because it is self-destructive as a cancer tumour is. And yes I believe there is "master shrink" for all of us, called Mother Nature and the process of evolutionary adaptation - coherent and cooperative participating relation in larger inclusive wholes (e.g local ecosystems and biosphere as whole).
Heart and soul of Marx' thought and pragmatic communism in general is consistent with deep ecology, but not with commodity fetishism of metaphysical mechanistically materialistic idealism, domination of things and fetishized measurability and countability.
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