Marxism is Unscientific [Archive]

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Skooma Addict

26th February 2010, 19:34

Karl Popper, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, thought many aspects of Marxism were unscientific....

It was the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories—the Marxist theory of history, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?"

To make this contrast clear I should explain that few of us at the time would have said that we believed in the truth of Einstein's theory of gravitation. This shows that it was not my doubting the truth of those three other theories which bothered me, but something else. Yet neither was it that I nearly felt mathematical physics to be more exact than sociological or psychological type of theory. Thus what worried me was neither the problem of truth, at that stage at least, nor the problem of exactness or measurability. It was rather that I felt that these other three theories, though posing as science, had in fact more in common with primitive myths than with science; that they resembled astrology rather than astronomy.

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analyzed" and crying aloud for treatment.

The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their "clinical observations." As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, Although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold."

--Karl Popper

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html#see

(I don't know how to insert those "spoiler" things).

So how would a historical materialist or Marxist relpy to Popper?

Havet

26th February 2010, 19:54

(I don't know how to insert those "spoiler" things).

Simply add insert text here

Without the underscore (_)

Zanthorus

26th February 2010, 19:55

A priori axioms aren't falsifiable either...

I'll come up with something more substantial in a bit.

Publius

26th February 2010, 20:44

Zanthorus

26th February 2010, 21:03

And I think it does speak against Marxism, to a large degree. Marx thought the revolution would occur right around the time he was writing, in Germany.

It didn't.

It still hasn't occurred.

Well first of all Historical materialism isn't all that there is to Marxism. Marx's critique of political economy is a falsifiable scientific theory.

And secondly, your criticism of Marxism (like all criticisms of Marxism) seems to center arround his predictions and not his method as such. A method producing bad results doesn't necessarily mean that the method is bad just that the way it's been applied in the past has been wrong or failed to take account of certain other crucial factors.

In Marx's case he underestimated capitalism's ability to adapt compared to the systems that preceded it. That's a problem with Marx's failure to incorporate certain factors (which to be fair, didn't really show themselves until after his death) not with the method.

Dean

26th February 2010, 21:12

For all of Popper's lip service to "falsifiable arguments," he provides no arguments in the above piece. Granted, this may be purely anecdotal, but to the OP, I would ask: what are we supposed to be responding to?

Publius is right: falsifiability is one of many methods for science, which is largely inapplicable to the social fields, and shouldn't be used as an end-all-be-all philosophy of science.

Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor

26th February 2010, 21:17

A friend of Popper's died trying to achieve communism. An associate didn't display the proper amount of sympathy, was cold, and said it was "for the greater good."

Because of his limited experiences and his inability to properly cope with the death of a friend, Popper decided Marxism was bad. He then proceeded to draw up an argument against it because of his personal motivations rather than a commitment to integrity and rational discourse.

I find it funny that he says "A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history." Popper couldn't open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of Marxism.

Really, it's nothing new that people skew facts all the time to fit their theories. It's a matter of determining what is sufficient evidence to give up on a theory. If all dogs have four legs, does a three legged dog stop this. Well, let's say no because it is unnatural or something. Change things up.

Theories are generally made and shifted to fit the evidence. So "OF COURSE" they interpret things to fit the theory. So do evolutionary biologists. There are bad and good theorists in science and politics. Some Marxists reach bad conclusions and some do not. It's got nothing to do with the validity of the theory itself.

Skooma Addict

26th February 2010, 21:50

Popper's notion of falsifiability just isn't a proper analysis of science.

First, it makes verification impossible.

Second, it's easily falsified itself. Popper says that the best theories are the ones that make the boldest predictions so as of right now, the theory "Quantum mechanics AND the world is going to end in 5 minutes" is a better theory than just "Quantum mechanics" because the former is more easily falsified. Of course this is stupid though. So something is wrong with Popper's analysis.

That said, his argument does have some validity, for example in the case of Freudian psychology, or even possibly Marxism. Popper's falsifiability is one, limited test we can use to evaluate a theory. And I think it does speak against Marxism, to a large degree. Marx thought the revolution would occur right around the time he was writing, in Germany.

It didn't.

It still hasn't occurred.

I sort of agree with this. I think Popper had good critiques of logical positivism/empiricism, but I don't think a theory is unscientific just because it is unfalsifiable. However, if your theory is unfalsifiable, that should be treated as a problem in many cases.

And secondly, your criticism of Marxism (like all criticisms of Marxism) seems to center arround his predictions and not his method as such. A method producing bad results doesn't necessarily mean that the method is bad just that the way it's been applied in the past has been wrong or failed to take account of certain other crucial factors.

In Marx's case he underestimated capitalism's ability to adapt compared to the systems that preceded it. That's a problem with Marx's failure to incorporate certain factors (which to be fair, didn't really show themselves until after his death) not with the method.

If that is the case, how would you prove historical materialism false? I don't have an opinion either way at the moment.

heiss93

26th February 2010, 22:08

Most scientists do what Popper accuses Marxists of doing. Scientists usually do not throw out the paradigm they are working other when a single fact falsifies it. Instead they will try to adapt their theory to the new facts. Popper criticized Darwinism on similar grounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Evolution

By Popper's criteria the discovery of Pluto was unscientific. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planets_beyond_Neptune

The orbit of Neptune falsified Newtonian astronomy. However scientists did not throw out Newtonian mechanics instead they postulated a Planet X to fit their theory.

So in that sense Popper's falsifiability has been superseded in philosophy of science by Kuhn's paradigm shift theory.

I would also add that Popper himself support Hayek's economics which was specifically designed to be unfalsifiable based on a priori metaphysics.

And Neoclassical models can never be falsified since they refer to self-contained economies that never exist.

The more I study bourgeois social science and theory of history, the more convinced I become that Engels was absolutely correct when he said that historical materialism was the extension of Darwinism into human history. Whatever the flaws of Marxist historical materialism, despite extensive searching I have yet to find even a flawed non-Marxian historical materialism. The closest thing is probably sociobiology, which uses human nature to explain psychology but has a very hard time explaining historical evolution. I did search for alternative Darwinist approach to history, and found attempts very lacking in substance. I'm genuinely interested in alternative scientific historical approaches, and if you know of any non-Marxian paradigms, I'd like to hear it.

Any scientific theory of history would have to give enormous weight to scientific-technological productive forces, essentially Marx's base, and have to explain change in the superstructure. So any real theory is going to look an awful lot like HistoMat. Being determines consciousness. I suppose class conflict would be the controversial point. An objective scientist would have to give strong weight to class conflict. But one could have a legitimate debate about other social factors. Any scientific view of society must be both historicist and economic determinist.

The idea that historicism is unscientific is ridiculous. The study of history has the exact same tools and limitations as the study of biological evolution.

IcarusAngel

26th February 2010, 22:41

I've never been a fan of scientific interpretations of history and politics. The techniques of science can help one determine truth, and convince people (one of the things of the scientific method that Libertarians don't like, the democracy inherent in it) of viewpoints, but that's about it.

Libertarians, particularly austirans, also keep claiming that society is about to "collapse," and then when it doesn't, they say the state has merely prolonged the "inevitable" delay. I think people can see what's wrong with this explanation.

Wolf Larson

26th February 2010, 22:56

The only unscientific speculative philosophy around here is free market anarcho capitalist, objectivist and agorist propaganda.

Skooma Addict

26th February 2010, 23:24

Kingpin

27th February 2010, 00:05

If that is the case, how would you prove historical materialism false? I don't have an opinion either way at the moment.

On wikipedia it says:

Advocates of historical materialism would suggest that their theory would be decisively refuted if modern capitalist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist) society as a whole decided to restore monarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy) and its feudalist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalist) forms of production. Except in catastrophic circumstances, such "random" shifts in social organization are considered impossible by historical materialists and most historicists - thus demonstrating a clear scientific falsifiability.

I always wondered what people's thought were on that paragraph, the talk page on wiki is pretty much dead.

La ComÃ©die Noire

27th February 2010, 03:41

Marx thought the revolution would occur right around the time he was writing, in Germany.

Marx thought a Bourgeois Revolution would occur around his time, which it did.

Zanthorus

27th February 2010, 13:10

Skooma Addict

27th February 2010, 18:42

On wikipedia it says:

Advocates of historical materialism would suggest that their theory would be decisively refuted if modern capitalist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist) society as a whole decided to restore monarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy) and its feudalist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalist) forms of production. Except in catastrophic circumstances, such "random" shifts in social organization are considered impossible by historical materialists and most historicists - thus demonstrating a clear scientific falsifiability.

I always wondered what people's thought were on that paragraph, the talk page on wiki is pretty much dead.

Alright, so if that is the case, then it seems like historical materialism is falsifiable. However, I want to make sure I understand this correctly. Historical materialism would only be falsified if the modern capitalist society as a whole became feudalistic? So every single capitalist state would have to revert back to feudalism?

Drace

27th February 2010, 22:01

A scientific theory adheres to the simplest laws of nature and builds up from there.
Everything has to be proved by the material conditions.

Isn't this what materialism teaches anyway?

Skooma Addict

28th February 2010, 18:47

A scientific theory adheres to the simplest laws of nature and builds up from there.
Everything has to be proved by the material conditions.

Isn't this what materialism teaches anyway?

You mean the metaphysical conception of materialism? Yes, that is roughly what it teaches. Everything can be explained in material/physical terms. But materialism in that sense of the word is very different from historical materialism.

jake williams

28th February 2010, 19:26

To respond directly to Herr Popper: Popper's comments about the Marxist reading a newspaper confuses a "falsifiable" theory with a false theory. As has been mentioned in this thread, and is obvious to anyone who isn't stupid or lying, there are specific and general claims that Marxism makes which are clearly falsifiable. The unfortunate thing for Mr. Popper is that not a lot of them are actually false. The Marxist reading the newspaper sees a lot of evidence for their general understanding of society not because they're delusional, but because their general understanding of society basically explains what actually goes on in the real world.

Comrade Gwydion

28th February 2010, 19:54

Didn't read all of the above, but I just had a class about Popper on the university.

One of the critiques against the critiques of Popper against dialectics goes as follows. Dialectics poses that there's a thesis, which has an anti-thesis as reaction, and out of those two comes a synthesis. This synthesis will have another antithesis, leading to another synthesis.

------->synthesis
|
------> synthesis---------------antithesis
|
thesis-----------antithesis

In popper's system, a theory is never true, yet we have to assume it is untill we´ve falsified it, which would lead to a new assumed theory.

--->assumed theory
|
----> assumed theory--------falsification
|
assumed theory-------------falsification

So, end result is basically the same. One of the critiques that Popper has on Marx that I do share, is that in Marx's point of view, there would be an end result at the end of dialectics which was the perfect world, communism. This communism would be the end of history.

Skooma Addict

28th February 2010, 20:02

In popper's system, a theory is never true, yet we have to assume it is untill we´ve falsified it, which would lead to a new assumed theory.

Popper would say that all we could say is that such a theory had not yet been falsified. We do not assume it is true no matter how many attempts at falsification the theory has withstood.

REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL

28th February 2010, 20:23

I believe the modern criterion for a deciding what is or isn't a science, is whether it could be eventually falsifiable.

If that wasn't the case then astronomer's hypothesis of a 9th planet, after they discovered planetary orbits didn't entirely conform to Newtonian physics, but that hadn't be proven to exist or not yet, was not a scientific theory, as it wasn't empirically falsifiable at the time whether the new planet really existed or not.

Likewise, Historical Materialism eventually be proven or shown to be false, as will all of Marx's predictions.

(Also, Popper was wrong about how science works - it doesn't develop at a steady rate, and new theories don't constantly replace old ones. It develops within general paradigms that work together, and that generally get replaced with something entirely new in a "revolution" of sorts after 50 - 100 years or so.)

ckaihatsu

10th March 2010, 15:11

A scientific theory adheres to the simplest laws of nature and builds up from there.
Everything has to be proved by the material conditions.

Isn't this what materialism teaches anyway?

To respond directly to Herr Popper: Popper's comments about the Marxist reading a newspaper confuses a "falsifiable" theory with a false theory. As has been mentioned in this thread, and is obvious to anyone who isn't stupid or lying, there are specific and general claims that Marxism makes which are clearly falsifiable. The unfortunate thing for Mr. Popper is that not a lot of them are actually false. The Marxist reading the newspaper sees a lot of evidence for their general understanding of society not because they're delusional, but because their general understanding of society basically explains what actually goes on in the real world.

I recall being taught that falsifiability was *the* litmus test for whether a hypothesis was scientifically sound or not -- it always stuck in my craw because it seemed too arbitrary and inflexible a criterion. After all, what if a theory was *so* good that it was unassailable and held up under as many empirical situations as could be thrown at it? Isn't the theory of *gravity* unfalsifiable, yet overwhelmingly considered to be true?!

Undeterred by spurious claims that *social science* theories would have to be falsifiable to be accepted as valid, I've gone ahead and made some graphics-based *frameworks* that could be considered unfalsifiable because they are all-encompassing, and yet I consider them to be both valid and valuable. (See tinypic.com/ckaihatsu or tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu)

Falsifiability is an important concept in science and the philosophy of science. The concept was made popular by Karl Popper, who, in his philosophical analysis of the scientific method, concluded that a hypothesis, proposition, or theory is "scientific" only if it is falsifiable. Popper however stressed that unfalsifiable statements are still important in science, and are often implied by falsifiable theories. For example, while "all men are mortal" is unfalsifiable, it is a logical consequence of the falsifiable theory that "every man dies before he reaches the age of 150 years". Similarly, the ancient metaphysical and unfalsifiable idea of the existence of atoms has led to corresponding falsifiable modern theories.

The criterion of demarcation

Popper uses falsification as a criterion of demarcation to draw a sharp line between those theories that are scientific and those that are unscientific. It is useful to know if a statement or theory is falsifiable, if for no other reason than that it provides us with an understanding of the ways in which one might assess the theory. One might at the least be saved from attempting to falsify a non-falsifiable theory, or come to see an unfalsifiable theory as unsupportable.

Popper claimed that, if a theory is falsifiable, then it is scientific.

The Popperian criterion excludes from the domain of science not unfalsifiable statements but only whole theories that contain no falsifiable statements; thus it leaves us with the Duhemian problem of what constitutes a 'whole theory' as well as the problem of what makes a statement 'meaningful'. Popper's own falsificationism, thus, is not only an alternative to verificationism, it is also an acknowledgement of the conceptual distinction that previous theories had ignored.

Criticisms

Contemporary philosophers

Many contemporary philosophers of science and analytic philosophers are strongly critical of Popper's philosophy of science. Popper's mistrust of inductive reasoning has led to claims that he misrepresents scientific practice. Among the professional philosophers of science, the Popperian view has never been seriously preferred to probabilistic induction, which is the mainstream account of scientific reasoning.[3] Adherents of Popper speak with disrespect of "professional philosophy", for example W. W. Bartley:
Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper's way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of contemporary professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

ckaihatsu

10th March 2010, 15:47

You mean the metaphysical conception of materialism? Yes, that is roughly what it teaches. Everything can be explained in material/physical terms. But materialism in that sense of the word is very different from historical materialism.

I don't think historical materialism is *so* different from philosophical materialism -- if we simply view ourselves as material-constituted organisms who take in nutrients and output energy then we have the basis for our extensions (participation) into the *social* world of historical materialism.

Taking it a step further, *how* we manipulate the material-based world around us defines the material basis of *society* as a whole -- its mode of production. If our physical (and cognitive and emotional) manipulation of the world should happen to produce more human-made materials (goods and services) than we could possibly consume in realtime then a *surplus* has been produced.

The *management* of that surplus has historically been done on a *dedicated* or *specialized* basis, showing a clear division of labor between the class that manages the surplus and the class that continues to expend energy (cognitive / emotional / physical) in order to *add* to that surplus.

Chris

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ZeroNowhere

10th March 2010, 16:28

So how would a historical materialist or Marxist relpy to Popper?
When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement – the real depiction – of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present. The removal of these difficulties is governed by premises which it is quite impossible to state here, but which only the study of the actual life-process and the activity of the individuals of each epoch will make evident. We shall select here some of these abstractions, which we use in contradistinction to the ideologists, and shall illustrate them by historical examples.

Dialectics poses that there's a thesis, which has an anti-thesis as reaction, and out of those two comes a synthesis. This synthesis will have another antithesis, leading to another synthesis.I'm sure that you are aware that the only time, so far as I recall, that Marx brought up the thesis-antithesis-synthesis thing, he was putting it in a negative light.

(Also, Popper was wrong about how science works - it doesn't develop at a steady rate, and new theories don't constantly replace old ones.I'm not sure he was wrong about scientific progress so much as incoherent; verisimilitude was to be measured by the excess of one infinite set over another, where neither could be compared through something along the lines of the diagonal argument. He didn't crash so much as never get off the ground.

CartCollector

12th March 2010, 23:50

I recall being taught that falsifiability was *the* litmus test for whether a hypothesis was scientifically sound or not -- it always stuck in my craw because it seemed too arbitrary and inflexible a criterion. After all, what if a theory was *so* good that it was unassailable and held up under as many empirical situations as could be thrown at it? Isn't the theory of *gravity* unfalsifiable, yet overwhelmingly considered to be true?!

A simple way you could prove the theory of gravity false is to show an example of two objects that disobey Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. For instance, if you dropped a ball while no forces (beside the possible force of gravity) acted on it and while on the surface of the Earth, and the ball didn't fall to the ground with an acceleration of roughly 9.81 m/s^2, you would have disproved gravity. So it is falsifiable, it's just hard to falsify. But that's what makes it a good theory.
It's important to note that Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation has been shown to not work in certain cases (for instance with extremely massive objects like black holes). However, the entire theory wasn't thrown out just because of one thing that falsified it. Einstein refined it so that it would work in more cases than Newton's law, and Newton's law was still used in situations where it gave a good enough approximation of reality.

ckaihatsu

13th March 2010, 16:03

A simple way you could prove the theory of gravity false is to show an example of two objects that disobey Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation.

This is nonsensical -- it's like saying we could disprove the theory of matter by finding some stuff that's not made of matter (or energy).

For instance, if you dropped a ball while no forces (beside the possible force of gravity) acted on it and while on the surface of the Earth, and the ball didn't fall to the ground with an acceleration of roughly 9.81 m/s^2, you would have disproved gravity. So it is falsifiable, it's just hard to falsify. But that's what makes it a good theory.

No, the theory of gravity -- and of matter, for that matter -- continues to be unfalsifiable because there's no way to get "outside", "around it" in order to poke at it.

(So that means that if we continue to accept the theories of gravity and matter as being true then our scientific basis for them is based on some standard *other* than falsifiability.)

It's important to note that Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation has been shown to not work in certain cases (for instance with extremely massive objects like black holes).

However, the entire theory wasn't thrown out just because of one thing that falsified it. Einstein refined it so that it would work in more cases than Newton's law, and Newton's law was still used in situations where it gave a good enough approximation of reality.

You'll have to elaborate here. As far as my understanding goes there's nothing about black holes that contradicts the theory of gravity.