Is Marxism...

[Art Vandelay]

...and ideology?

....a science?

Discuss.

[jookyle]

It's an ideology achieved by applying the scientific method.

[Caj]

Marxism is a scientific, materialist mode of analysis for understanding human society and history. It is neither an ideology in the Marxian nor even in the conventional sense of the word.

[ind_com]

Marxism is an ideology directed to achieve communism. It is scientific in its analysis of the society and derivation of strategy and tactics required by the masses for waging class war.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Mode of social and economic analysis. Some have cast Marxism as an ideology in the past century, but the ideologues' projects have all failed. A Marxian revival in the 21st century requires us to come to grips with the ideological failures of the 20th century.

[The Idler]

Marxian economics is a science like Newtonian physics or Darwinian evolution.

[Rafiq]

It is a science, Communism is an ideology.

[Zanthorus]

Marxism is not a science, a science is a field of enquiry with a unique object of study like Physics or Biology. Marx didn't study anything which hadn't been studied before him, he offered a unique way of looking at the objects being studied. Marxism is a paradigm.

[Hit The North]

Marxism is dialectically all of these things.

[Rafiq]

Marxism is not a science, a science is a field of enquiry with a unique object of study like Physics or Biology. Marx didn't study anything which hadn't been studied before him, he offered a unique way of looking at the objects being studied. Marxism is a paradigm.



What of the social sciences, though?

And biology was a subject studied long before Darwin... What of it?

[Thirsty Crow]

What of the social sciences, though?

And biology was a subject studied long before Darwin... What of it?
Well yes it is quite clear that, to borrow from Zanthorus, Marx offered a unique way of looking at objects (not to be interpreted as "things") which are the objects of social sciences and economics (is economics classified as part of the social sciences?).

The real question is not "Is Marxism a science", but rather "Is Marxism scientific".

[Avanti]

marxism is a mystery school religion.

[Zanthorus]

What of the social sciences, though?

What of them? The study of society existed prior to Marx. Even if it hadn't, Marxism is not the only possible approach to social sciences - if it were proved that Marx was the first person to take a scientific approach to the study of society that would credit him as the founder of social science, but 'Marxism' as such would still be a paradigm within social science and not a science in and of itself.


And biology was a subject studied long before Darwin... What of it?So, Darwinian evolution isn't a science, it is a hypothesis within the scientific field of biology. As Menocchio hinted at, you seem to have a problem comprehending the difference between a science as such and scientific hypotheses and paradigms. Marxism may be the latter, and it may contain hypotheses, but it is an abuse of the english language to claim it as a science in and of itself.

[Rafiq]

Well yes it is quite clear that, to borrow from Zanthorus, Marx offered a unique way of looking at objects (not to be interpreted as "things") which are the objects of social sciences and economics (is economics classified as part of the social sciences?).

The real question is not "Is Marxism a science", but rather "Is Marxism scientific".



It is not simply economics. It is an entirely new conception of the organisation of humans, and social change. Marx discovered the "social laws of motion", a new understanding of what a human is.

[Rafiq]

So, Darwinian evolution isn't a science, it is a hypothesis within the scientific field of biology. As Menocchio hinted at, you seem to have a problem comprehending the difference between a science as such and scientific hypotheses and paradigms. Marxism may be the latter, and it may contain hypotheses, but it is an abuse of the english language to claim it as a science in and of itself.

Ah, now I know what you mean. I suppose it was an improper usage of terminology on my part. I only meant that it is scientific.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Marxism is not a science for the same reason Darwinism and Behaviorism are not sciences. These are all schools of scientific thought, not sciences themselves. Historical Materialism is a philosophy of social science.

[Rafiq]

historical materialism isn't a philosophy.

[Yuppie Grinder]

It is a philosophy of science the same way positivism is a philosophy of science. Historical materialism and positivism are quite compatible by the way.

[robbo203]

I am skeptical of this whole "Marxism is science" line of approach and talk of "scientific socialism" - which is traditionally counterposed by Marxists to "utopian socialism" - makes my toes curl, frankly. Its embarrassing and those who habitually invoke the expression tend to exhibit an approach that is more akin to religious dogmatism than open-minded enquiry.

Marx himself made the point that philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways and that the point was to change it. In other words, Marxism is or ought to be normative. Science explains and illuminates but, ideally speaking, it does not and cannot prescribe: it is supposedly "value free". Values however are precisely the stuff with which Marxists are concerned with and I dont mean here timeless universal values in some abstract ahistorical sense either but class values, class loyalties and class identification

Of course Marxism involves understanding too but you can perfectly understand what Marxism claims without sharing its commitment to change the world at all. Karl Kautsky once asserted that "it was the materialist interpretation of history which first completely deposed the moral ideal as the directing factor of social revolution” and that this theory has ‘taught us to deduce our social aims solely from the knowledge of the material foundations’ ( Ethics and the Materialist Conception Of History,1906, Chapter V . "The Ethics of Marxism"). This perfectly illustrates the confusion into which many Marxists have fallen and the stultifying effect of "scientism" has had on Marxism with the mechanistic base-superstructure model of social change that surfaces in the thinking of many Marxists

The rather obnoxious neoconservative and harsh critic of Marxism, Joshua Muravchik, does make a rather telling point in that regard in what is otherwise a gross caricature of Marx and Marxism:
Karl Marx disdained the utopians as so many "organizers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind." In contrast, he offered "scientific socialism." This was a spectacular inversion. What is science but the practice of experimentation, of hypothesis and test? Owen and Fourier and their followers were the real ‘scientific socialists.’ They hit upon the idea of socialism, and they tested it by attempting to form socialist communities. In all, there were scores of these tests in America and England—and all of them failed, utterly and disastrously. Then along comes Marx and says, never mind with these experiments at bringing about socialism by human devices, it will be brought about by the impersonal force of history. In other words, under the banner of "science," Marx shifted the basis for socialism from human ingenuity to sheer prophecy. (http://www.aei.org/article/politics-and-public-opinion/the-rise-and-fall-of-socialism-speech/)

[cb9's_unity]

The meaning of the word science is itself difficult to pin down exactly. People have been trying to use a concept of science for thousand of years. Over the past 100 or 150 science it has developed connotations that might not have been as prevalent during Marx's time (for example, I don't believe experimentation was as closely linked as it was today, but I might be wrong).

When I see Marx use the word science my guess is that all he was talking about what a rigorous and methodological study of empirical data. Marx was avoiding the rampant speculation of German philosophy.

Like all science the aggregation of data can only gain meaning once theory is applied to it. In the case of Marxism, the data that is being aggregated is that of the recorded history of society. Since the powers that rule society highlight and suppress data in a way that always attempts to justify their own power any theory that deviates from that narrative is inherently critical. When the "scientist" becomes critical of existing political/historical narratives they are taking an ethical stance on society. Thus any coherent study of society must be critical and ethical, unlike the scientific study of other more natural or physical forces.

As for ideology, my own interpretation of Marxism recognizes that humans can be most broadly characterized by their ability for apparently free expression and creative action. We can then relate historical movements to those characteristics and take an ethical stance by becoming critical of them if we see them as unnecessarily limiting to free expression and creativity. We are not trying to advocate any one lifestyle, which would be ideological, but trying to limit things that limit people from choosing their own lifestyle. Of course I have anything but a settled mind on the issue of ideology, this is just my current go at thinking about it.

Regardless, I think we should all be careful about getting too deeply into rhetoric. What we think science "is" is not as important as what Marx thought science was. That isn't because Marx was or wasn't right about what science "is," it is because how he used the conception of it to understand society and take action in relation to it is far more important than how any one word ought to be defined.

[Thirsty Crow]

The rather obnoxious neoconservative and harsh critic of Marxism, Joshua Muravchik, does make a rather telling point in that regard in what is otherwise a gross caricature of Marx and Marxism:

It's nothing like a telling point. It's a very old trick in the ideological arsenal of the ruling class. Notice this:


Then along comes Marx and says, never mind with these experiments at bringing about socialism by human devices, it will be brought about by the impersonal force of history

This distorts Marx's views completely.
First of all, there is no "impersonal force of history" outside the human affair of class struggle which implies human beings pursuing their goals, however formed and defined.
Secondly, Marx did not consistently argue that socialism will be brought about by the somehow superhuman, inhuman force of History. There is a formulation in The Holy Family which illuminates this rather well:


Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanization which is conscious of its dehumanization, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat

So, the conclusion is that the so called "impersonal force of history" has produced a specific class which is by its very position in bourgeois society capable of overthrowing the same society. By contrast, what is problematic in such "experiments" the author mentions is the fact that they rest on a flawed conception of the possible means of transcending private property. How could socialism be demonstrated as a possible mode of production outside of the movement which abolishes the very conditions which perpetuate the social form which is opposed to socialism? How could communes and isolated communities based on specific rules escape the determination of the broader forces in society?

In short, it's clear that this pronouncement is not guided by a well thought out conception of the relationship between experiment in physical sciences and the process of social transformation, but instead by an implicit opposition to class struggle.

[Rafiq]

It is a philosophy of science the same way positivism is a philosophy of science. Historical materialism and positivism are quite compatible by the way.

Well regardless of the fact that positivism is anti Marxist, Marxism is definitely not a philosophy. Marxism is a means of understanding human social organisation, it is not a "philosophy" and it is not subjective, i.e. It is not simply just "another way of looking at" phenomena, it is the means by which we objectively analyse human social relations.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The relationship between Positivism and Marxism hasn't got anything to do with what I'm saying. You don't know what a philosophy of science is.
Also, lol at you dismissing all philosophy as relativist. Leave it to rafiq to dismiss entire aspects of the human experience with buzzwords.

[Rafiq]

"Philosophy of science" doesn't exist. You can't call a theoretical tendancy a "philsophy". Especially one like materialism.

Hmm what else

Subjective =\= relativist

Anything else?

[Yuppie Grinder]

fucking google positivism and it'll tell you its a philosophy of science
ask any scientist or philosopher in the entire world what a philosophy of science is and the will tell you

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

"Philosophy of science" refers to the study of the use of science, something of no value to the progression of science as science is not concerned with the value of anything, it stands apart from such things, seeking instead to gather facts objectively. Objectivity is what science is built on, the focus being the object itself as opposed to the merits of it.

That's a lot of "science" in paragraph.

[MarxArchist]

Analysis of capitalism, historical materialism= science. On the rare occasion Marx touched on what a communist society would look like? Ideology.