How is/what makes Marxism "scientific?" - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Discourse exclusively on the basis of historical materialist methodology.
Forum rules: No one line posts please. This forum is for discussion based on Marxism, Marxism-Leninism and similar revisions. Critique of topics not based on historical materialism belongs in the general Communism forum.
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By Meslocusist
#13398198
Cookie Monster wrote:The development of science is something different than the cognitive basis of science. Many scientific discoveries were by coincidence. Nevertheless they were rational in the sense they had an empirical basis.


Evolutionary, one might say. I feel like there is something in that, a dialectic between the striving of individual scientists for truth, and the social, political, and economic circumstances which often slow this development.

I've read the "Dialectics4kids" page, and I think it shows that there is some promise to Marxism*- as you can probably guess from above, the Hegelian Dialectic does seem like a useful tool in teleological discussions. On the other hand, Marxism seems to have frozen at Bourgeoisie=Oppressors, Proletarians= Oppressed, and could I think definitely use a revitalization.

Not to say that capitalism has anything that is much better, really. Capitalist Economics is a very narrow field and is really only applicable in certain circumstances (Stable government, fairly continuous level of resource availability, etc.), and is as degenerate as Marxism in the sense that economists are always trying to cover for their incorrect predictions.

*Is Marxism itself perhaps a misnomer? Economics is not called Smith-ism, relativity not Einsteinianism, and Evolution only Darwinism by opponents. Calling it Marxism is akin to calling a religion Christianity- you are tied forever to the originator. Just a thought, but perhaps if Marxism is to be revised as a progressive science, a more progressive name is in order?
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By Meslocusist
#13398845
This is semi-false. Whilst true that the vast majority of capital is in the hands of the bourgeoisie, they are as stuck in the system as the proles.


My bad- although I'm not sure that "stuck" is exactly the right word when they're living in a system that is beneficial for them.
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By Le Rouge
#13399010
I've read the "Dialectics4kids" page, and I think it shows that there is some promise to Marxism*- as you can probably guess from above, the Hegelian Dialectic does seem like a useful tool in teleological discussions. On the other hand, Marxism seems to have frozen at Bourgeoisie=Oppressors, Proletarians= Oppressed, and could I think definitely use a revitalization.

Marx's dialectic was an inversion of the Hegelian dialectic that viewed History as a teleological movement toward an Absolute. Marx's dialectic is a methodology of deconstructing the hegemonic ideas in order to discover the true movement of history as the aleatory progression of human social activity from different modes of organization to others.
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By Meslocusist
#13399198
My bad again. A Marxian Dialectic, I suppose.

Fortunately, I never have, and probably never will, claim that I know everything or even the most important things about Marxism.
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By sans-culotte
#13399301
This does raise a point that I know nothing about. Did Marxism arise out of circumstance? All the events leading up to that point may have had irrational causes, and therefore by extension, the rise of Marxism would be irrational.

I would agree with the narrative of Marxism developing irrationally. In fact, it still is developing irrationally...
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By Fitzy
#13457863
Can you guys give some examples of why Marxism is a "degenerative research program"? What should we change about Marxism, specifically?
By anticlimacus
#13457892
What should we change in terms of Marxism? First, the reduction of societal epochs to a strict base-superstructure model. It's a crass economism that really has little historical justification, and if it does, it is stretched. Second, the labor theory of value that Marx espoused is innacurate and I don't think any economists, except hard line Marxists, have taken it too seriously in the last century. Third, the "scientific" justification for transcending capitalism into communism. Fourth, the assumption that through the method of dialectical materialism one transcends ideology. There are several others, but I think these are pertinant. Perhaps a good question is what is to be salvaged from Marx--and I do think there is alot--and what does a Marxist outlook look like when making these adjustments?
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By The Clockwork Rat
#13457900
Second, the labor theory of value that Marx espoused is innacurate and I don't think any economists, except hard line Marxists, have taken it too seriously in the last century.

I think I saw something a while back on PoFo, where someone mentioned a study done by some famous US economist that said the LToV was actually the major player in the 20th century. I can't remember where, or when I saw this, sorry.
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By Fitzy
#13457953
anticlimacus wrote:What should we change in terms of Marxism? First, the reduction of societal epochs to a strict base-superstructure model. It's a crass economism that really has little historical justification, and if it does, it is stretched. Second, the labor theory of value that Marx espoused is innacurate and I don't think any economists, except hard line Marxists, have taken it too seriously in the last century. Third, the "scientific" justification for transcending capitalism into communism. Fourth, the assumption that through the method of dialectical materialism one transcends ideology. There are several others, but I think these are pertinant. Perhaps a good question is what is to be salvaged from Marx--and I do think there is alot--and what does a Marxist outlook look like when making these adjustments?

You are not even a Marxist. You don't even understand marxism, so why talk about changing it? Big help you are.
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By Kasu
#13457986
From Dialectical Materialism and Science:

http://marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/09/science.htm

Trotsky wrote:There is a difference in the degree of foresight and precision achieved in the various sciences. But it is through foresight – passive, in some instances as in astronomy, active as in chemistry and chemical engineering – that science is able to verify itself and justify its social purpose. An individual scientist may not at all be concerned with the practical application of his research. The wider his scope, the bolder his flight, the greater his freedom from practical daily necessity in his mental operations, all the better. But science is not a function of individual scientists; it is a public function. The social evaluation of science, its historical evaluation is determined by its capacity to increase man’s power and arm him with the power to foresee and master nature. Science is knowledge that endows us with power.

When Leverrier on the basis of the “eccentricities” in the orbit of Uranus concluded that there must exist an unknown celestial body “disturbing” the movement of Uranus; when Leverrier on the basis of his purely mathematical calculations requested the German astronomer Galle to locate a body wandering without a passport in the skies at such and such an address; when Galle focussed his telescope in that direction and discovered the planet called Neptune – at that moment the celestial mechanics of Newton celebrated a great victory.

This occurred in the autumn of 1846. In the year 1848 revolution swept like a whirlwind through Europe, demonstrating its “disturbing” influence on the movement of peoples and states. In the intervening period, between the discovery of Neptune and the revolution of 1848, two young scholars, Marx and Engels, wrote The Communist Manifesto, in which they not only predicted the inevitability of revolutionary events in the near future, but also analyzed in advance their component forces, the logic of their movement – up to the inevitable victory of the proletariat and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The essence of Marxism consists in this, that it approaches society concretely, as a subject for objective research, and analyzes human history as one would a colossal laboratory record. Marxism appraises ideology as a subordinate integral element of the material social structure. Marxism examines the class structure of society as a historically conditioned form of the development of the productive forces; Marxism deduces from the productive forces of society the inter-relations between human society and surrounding nature, and these, in turn are determined at each historical stage by man’s technology, his instruments and weapons, his capacities and methods for struggle with nature. Precisely this objective approach arms Marxism with the insuperable power of historical foresight.

Consider the history of Marxism even if only on the national scale of Russia, and follow it not from the standpoint of your own political sympathies or antipathies but from the standpoint of Mendeleyev’s definition of science:

To know so that we may foresee and act.


And from Culture and Socialism:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct20 ... -o23.shtml

Trotsky wrote:If you examine the natural sciences from the ground up, from the realm of accumulating elementary facts to the highest and most complex generalizations, then you will see that the more empirical the scientific investigation, the closer it is to its material and to the facts, the more indisputable are the results it gives. The wider the field of generalizations, the more closely natural science comes to problems of philosophy, the more susceptible it is to the influence of class suggestions.

Matters are more complicated and worse when it comes to the social sciences and the so-called "humanities". Even here, of course, the desire to know what is was fundamentally at work. Due to this we have had, by the way, the brilliant school of classical bourgeois economists. But class interest, which is felt in the social sciences much more directly and imperatively than in natural science, soon brought to a halt the development of economic thought in bourgeois society. In this field we communists are better armed, however, than in any other. Basing themselves on bourgeois science and criticizing it, the socialist theoreticians who were awakened by the class struggle of the proletariat created, in the works of Marx and Engels, the powerful method of historical materialism and its unsurpassed application in Capital.
By anticlimacus
#13459618
Fitzy,

At the very least, I do think that I understand Marxism. I am not orthodox--and I would not call myself a strict Marxist; in fact, I don't really care whether or not one calls me a Marxist. However, many Marxists share the same concerns that I listed above.

The important point is that I do take a Marxist approach to many subjects and repeatedly go back to Marx. Marx is an essential thinker in my bag of intellectual tools, and one does not need to be a conservative Marxist, or even a Marxist, in order to use Marx and/or elaborate on Marx and Marxism (which are not the same thing). I share much of the same antihumanist orientation of Marx, a conflict approach to understanding historical transformation, I find private property and its basic contradiction of private consumption with social production to be seriously problematic, and finally I focus, like Marx, on understanding the development of modern society, albeit I do not focus solely on capitalism or understand modern society solely in terms of the mode of production--such as the capitalist mode of production. In sum, my particular views on Marx have developed out of the Frankfurt school, noteably Habermas, along with the French sociology and the work of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, and, of course, Kant. So in the light of these different strands--and others--I see need for some revision of Marx without dismissing Marx. Marx was not correct on everything, and his theories are not perfect, even if a good starting point for understanding modernity after industrialization.
Last edited by anticlimacus on 28 Jul 2010 22:19, edited 2 times in total.
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By Eauz
#13459705
Mod Note: Keep the name-calling and random assumptions about other users out of here. This sub-forum is not called the gossip sub-forum.
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By KurtFF8
#13485114
Sorry to jump into this so late, but I'm currently reading Althusser: The Detour of Theory by Gregory Elliott, and I'm seeing a lot of Althusserian concepts coming up here. This is of particular interest to me:

The ClockworkRat wrote:Did Marxism arise out of circumstance? All the events leading up to that point may have had irrational causes, and therefore by extension, the rise of Marxism would be irrational.


And the reply:

Potemkin wrote:That may be so, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that Marxism itself is irrational. However, it is a fundamental tenet of Marxism (ultimately derived from Hegel) that the development of human society through the historical process is fundamentally rational in the sense that its trends can be understood through rational analysis. This does not negate the contingency of particular historical events, however.


It's important to note that folks like Althusser were quite opposed to the sort of historicist idea that "Marxism just came about via the specific conditions in which Capital was written" or something like that. Given the broader discussion of the rationality of science, it's certainly a valid question to ask (what Clockwork asked here). But, at least for Althusser, he was trying to demonstrate that Historical Materialism was different in that it was a new method to explain a theory of history in general, and that even in Capital, what was being advanced was a scientific method of analysis. And it did have as its object the capitalist mode of production, it was applying a broader method of analysis. This method, as was pointed out earlier by Potemkin, was vastly incomplete.

I may be a little more pessimistic as to what the consequences of the fall of the USSR will have for Marxism. It's clear that there were some significant problems during the USSR for the Marxist project and continued political development (also note the Sino-Soviet split and the affect that had on the broader discourse). That's not to say that the USSR was, as some "far leftists" would say, just a hijacking of Marx and Marxism for political gains. There were certainly some problems with the USSR (maybe even from the start) but I'd still say there's a reason that the majority of Marxist posters here gladly have things like a hammer and sickle signature ;)
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By The Clockwork Rat
#13485318
:hmm:

Could there have been a situation where Louis had not supported the American revolution? If France had not been bankrupted by this, the economic situation, and then the revolutionary situation that followed, could have been far different and not have had the same influences on Marx.

Bah, speculation can be pointless.
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By Ombrageux
#13485328
Is Marxism itself perhaps a misnomer? Economics is not called Smith-ism, relativity not Einsteinianism, and Evolution only Darwinism by opponents. Calling it Marxism is akin to calling a religion Christianity- you are tied forever to the originator. Just a thought, but perhaps if Marxism is to be revised as a progressive science, a more progressive name is in order?

I think Marxism - or the worker's movement that followed it and certainly "Marxism-Leninism" - has a number of religious characteristics, complete with faith, its own sophisticated eschatology (end of world), patron saints, holy texts, schisms ("revisionism") and heretics. Hence why while capitalists generally just fight wars with one another or dislike each other, Marxist-Leninists will divide themselves into ferociously opposed schools including "Titoism", "Maoism", "Trotskyism", etc... It undermines the entire tradition and what good there is in the Marxist school and Marxist thought has be sharply separated from the propaganda of its rival "churches".
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By Ombrageux
#13485352
Yes, frankly. Fascist/nationalist ideologies don't attempt to be universal and therefore Adolf Hitler if he had a dispute with Mussolini, Petain or Franco wouldn't think of accusing said person of "revisionism" or being "untrue" to the common ideology. Liberalism doesn't have any of these tendencies either (notwithstanding a "Utopianism"/"End of History" schemes in its more extreme forms) and, besides, doesn't have personality cults to begin with. Liberalism can be skeptical whereas Marxism is dogmatic. The only ideologies like the practice of Marxism-Leninism are literally the religious ones - all Christian branches but especially Catholicism. It might be something like old Islam or modern Islamism, but I don't know enough about them.
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