How do Marxists repond to Karl Popper's criticisms of Marxism.

[TaylorS]

Karl Popper in his book The Open Society And It's Enemies criticizes Marxism as being an unfalsifiable "totalizing ideology", claiming that we can dismiss any criticism as bourgeois ideology. This is part of his more general critique of "Historicism".

This is something that has really bothered me for a while. because I can't see anything wrong with his argument.

[The Idler]

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/subject/karl-popper
and in print form
http://www.lulu.com/shop/ted-wilmott/the-critics-criticised-professor-popper-looks-at-history/paperback/product-21104785.html


Many critics see Marxism as a theory of iron determinism which regards men as puppets pulled by the strings of historical necessity. Mr. R. K. Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies, believes that too. One could say why bother about such palpable errors? The pity of it is not that Mr. Popper has written it but many who read him might come to believe it.
Mr. Popper holds that Marxist historicism is fatalism. He also holds that it helps to generate beliefs that men are mere instruments of impersonal forces. Such views, he thinks, tend towards men coming to accept a collective tyranny called by him, "the closed society" as against the "open society" where democracy and toleration prevail.
Mr. Popper is a Christian toreador who seizes the Marxist bull by the historic horns by declaring there can be no concrete history of mankind. "Such a concrete history would have to be the history of all men; of all human hope, struggle and suffering" (p. 270). We are also told "it would have to be the life of the unknown individual man . . . this is the real content of human experience down the ages" (p. 272). Thus does Mr. Popper consign history to the unknown and unknowable. There are, he tells us, separate histories, viz., the histories of politics, technocracy, art, economics, poetry, etc. Such histories, he thinks, should be studied and interpreted from our own standpoint. We can, for example, interpret the history of political power in the light of "our struggle for the open society." While history vide Mr. Popper "has no meaning, in this way we can give meaning to it."

...

[Red Economist]

Karl Popper in his book The Open Society And It's Enemies criticizes Marxism as being an unfalsifiable "totalizing ideology", claiming that we can dismiss any criticism as bourgeois ideology. This is part of his more general critique of "Historicism".

This is something that has really bothered me for a while. because I can't see anything wrong with his argument.

Basically, it's a mess.

There are very few people who have offered criticisms of Poppers ideas. To the large extent his conception of falsifiable hypothesis has been accepted into the philosophy of science without much question, even though very few theories would fit it.

A very crude Marxist criticism is that 'falsification' leads to an 'either-or' assumption about the nature of truth; someone is either true or false, where as often it is a question of degrees.

The concept of 'falsification' leads to a rather bizarre conclusion; knowledge is the reduction of ignorance as opposed to the growth in our understanding or truth. This generally fails to take into account the 'success' as proof of the validity of the scientific method over the past two-three centuries.

His argument is that Marxism has a confirmation bias, similar to a religious prophesy which therefore makes it unfalsifiable. The problem is that what doesn't have a confirmation bias? The only way to demonstrate the truth of an idea is to prove it in practice. This is true for religious, liberal and communist ideologies.

This is a particular problem in social science (hence his criticism of historicism): if we argue X will happen in the future, the only way we can be sure is by trying to do X because humans are both observing a social-historical phenemona whilst being part of it. For a philosophical determinist, this 'proves' the validity of the original hypothesis, whereas for an indeterminist who believes in free will, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy which are person acted on in the first place. Historicism belongs to the determinist school of thought and Poppers liberalism to indeterminism.

On the relationship between totalitarianism and historicism, I would briefly note that totalitarian 'world-views' are a pretty good description of virtually all religious beliefs before liberal secularism. Morality and law were not separate disciplines until (I think) the nineteenth century and this is a peculiar feature of liberal secularism in which the law is public whilst morality is private or individual; hence any attempt to enforce a public morality is crudely speaking totalitarian.
Totalitarianism is in most respect a twentieth century theocracy; X is the one true faith, and we will kill everyone who doesn't fit into it, agrees with it or deviates from the established creed. of course persecution is not a 'rational' social process and ends up swallowing up lots of innocent people in the process.

Many religions are considered forms of 'magical thinking' (attributing cause to coincidence), but this is based on the assumption that we have a correct understanding of the laws of nature. The conception of these laws originated from philosophical discussions of 'natural philosophy' which evolved into 'natural science' (dumping the philosophical component as science became institutionalised and it's method established). Science therefore stills ultimately rests on certian philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality which originate subjectively from an individual/given historical period.
It is also important to note that Liberalism began by making historicist assumptions because liberal societies were supposed to be the result of natural law which realized the natural rights of an individual. This aspect of classical liberalism was dumped when liberalism itself became established in the mid-nineteenth century after they had had their revolutions.

Marxism begins by making certain assumptions about the nature of society, which have logical conclusions; capitalism has internal contradictions, therefore it will end in a communist revolution. Regardless as to whether they are true or not, Marxists- like all religions and ideologists before them- have to act on their position to discover whether it is valid. They could ultimately be false or on partially true and that is something we cannot control.

In the end Falsification ignores the role of subjectivity in human thought; we have to believe something in order to recognize it as true, including 'scientific' facts, because truth is discovered by human beings (even thought it will always have been their to be discovered in the first place). This however pretty much kills any belief Marxism as a positivist science (and positivism more generally), but still leaves space to much more limited claims about the ability of dialectical reasoning to make predictions.

Popper is in many respects right, but it rests on some rather 'dodgy' assumptions which are widely accepted and therefore make things appear simpler than they really are. It is better to think of historicism as a philosophical art (with all the uncertainty) rather than a 'science' as science has taken on some distinctly authoritarian, dogmatic and absolutist claims of truth in the twentieth century not unlike religion in previous centuries (at least popular science that is, because people don't explain the complexity of the problems involved).

[ckaihatsu]

There are very few people who have offered criticisms of Poppers ideas. To the large extent his conception of falsifiable hypothesis has been accepted into the philosophy of science without much question, even though very few theories would fit it.

A very crude Marxist criticism is that 'falsification' leads to an 'either-or' assumption about the nature of truth; someone is either true or false, where as often it is a question of degrees.

The concept of 'falsification' leads to a rather bizarre conclusion; knowledge is the reduction of ignorance as opposed to the growth in our understanding or truth. This generally fails to take into account the 'success' as proof of the validity of the scientific method over the past two-three centuries.

His argument is that Marxism has a confirmation bias, similar to a religious prophesy which therefore makes it unfalsifiable. The problem is that what doesn't have a confirmation bias? The only way to demonstrate the truth of an idea is to prove it in practice. This is true for religious, liberal and communist ideologies.


Thank you.

Since Marxism -- *like* religious belief -- is *so* comprehensive in its take on all aspects of individual and social existence, it can be termed 'paradigmatic' -- and also 'unfalsifiable', because of its all-encompassing nature.





We could call Marxism a 'societal paradigm', and also call religious thought a 'societal paradigm' -- the difference is that religion has already been historically manifested, whereas Marxism has not.


What's *really* at stake here is whether Marxism (or whatever) has *explanatory power* -- validity -- when applied (top-down)(deductively) to specific cases, and in actually being consistent (bottom-up)(inductively) across any collection of real-world phenomena.


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

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


Generalizations-Characterizations

http://s6.postimage.org/dakqpbvu5/2714844340046342459_Quxppf_fs.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/dakqpbvu5/)


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://s6.postimage.org/zbpxjshkd/1_History_Macro_Micro_Precision.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/zbpxjshkd/)

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Popper is some weak-ass shit, and, ironically, simply presents the flip-side of the vulgar-Marxist coin, where social life is confronted as "atomic" rather than as a totality. His social thought, not surprisingly bares striking similarity to his ahistorical understandings of science, premised on an ever-progressive falsification, rather than a social movement of paradigms.

All of this just reminds me of how badly I need to get around to reading Thomas Kuhn.

I swear I'll start as soon as I finish the Foucalt I'm reading.
Yes, this is totally trollbait for all the enlightenment-lovin' progress-hungry vulgar Marxists who are afraid of anything "continental" or "post-modern".

[Thirsty Crow]

His argument is that Marxism has a confirmation bias, similar to a religious prophesy which therefore makes it unfalsifiable. The problem is that what doesn't have a confirmation bias? The only way to demonstrate the truth of an idea is to prove it in practice. This is true for religious, liberal and communist ideologies.

This is misleading.

First, there is a functional difference between Marxism - or historical materialism - as a paradigm, with its concrete applications(which I would hope tend to be based not on a priori dogmatism and elaborate language tricks as "proof"), and communist political practice (what you call ideology).

How can I demonstrate the truth value of a proposition in practice, human practice, apart from applying the tools which are historically developed, such as the microscope in testing the proposition? This surely can be taken to mean that propositions aren't tested, and can't be, by some kind of an "internal" process of logical thinking-it-through - we really have to see what the world is like. That is a common sense and useful interpretation of "truth-in-practice".


This is a particular problem in social science (hence his criticism of historicism): if we argue X will happen in the future, the only way we can be sure is by trying to do X because humans are both observing a social-historical phenemona whilst being part of it. For a philosophical determinist, this 'proves' the validity of the original hypothesis, whereas for an indeterminist who believes in free will, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy which are person acted on in the first place.Consider the example of the prediction of crises of accumulation, or any other form of economic disturbance.
The picture presented above clearly doesn't hold since it would presuppose a sufficient economic basis for the researcher to act as a lever in this sense. How do you propose a Marxist criticizing contemporary political economy and studying the patterns of accumulation go about provoking the crisis?

What this means that the picture is very far from a self-fulfilling prophecy - it's that of people who study the development of accumulation and thus posit falsifiable theses.

And finally, in conjunction with this problematic introduction of practice into play here, what would you say about the old Ptolemaic system making successful predictions? Does that mean that practice has confirmed it?


Marxism begins by making certain assumptions about the nature of society, which have logical conclusions; capitalism has internal contradictions, therefore it will end in a communist revolution.And here we have a falsifiable thesis. Though, that depends on what do we consider "Marxism" (are there Marxisms?).
To reiterate what I wrote above, the assumptions from which Marxism (should) start(s) are real assumptions - living men and their mutual interaction in producing the means of production and subsistence and their social relations with it, as it is.
After the study of this specific society, the conclusion is that capital presents the barrier to capital accumulation - inherently crisis prone etc.

But the important point is that your conclusion, which implies the inevitability of communist revolution, is false and born from the specific teleological interpretation of the materialist conception of history and the analysis of capital. Indeed, there is good reason, common sense that is, to rely on historical experience and cast serious doubt over such idealist optimism.

[Strannik]

The problem with Popper's falsification criterion becomes apparent when you see that what he says about historical materialism also applies to theory of evolution. He belongs in my opinion to same group of anticommunists as Hayek - their criticism within the limits of their argument may be logically sound, but their premises themselves are false. Both Popper and Hayek set up a vulgar idealistic model of Marxist thought and counterpose to it idealistic liberal-capitalistic counterargument, neither of which has anything to do with actually existing world.

[Dagoth Ur]

Positivism overall ignores how science works. It's a shit attempt at enforcing a philosophy onto science.

Marxism is clearly falsifiable (if only the capitalists were able to solve class contradiction... somehow) but I wouldn't say the same of Diamat. But like quantum physics how the shit would you even approach it? I know Rosa L has tried (extensively) but I've never been convinced.

[Red Economist]

Some good points Linksradical.


Originally Posted by Red Economist
His argument is that Marxism has a confirmation bias, similar to a religious prophesy which therefore makes it unfalsifiable. The problem is that what doesn't have a confirmation bias? The only way to demonstrate the truth of an idea is to prove it in practice. This is true for religious, liberal and communist ideologies. This is misleading.

First, there is a functional difference between Marxism - or historical materialism - as a paradigm, with its concrete applications(which I would hope tend to be based not on a priori dogmatism and elaborate language tricks as "proof"), and communist political practice (what you call ideology).

How can I demonstrate the truth value of a proposition in practice, human practice, apart from applying the tools which are historically developed, such as the microscope in testing the proposition? This surely can be taken to mean that propositions aren't tested, and can't be, by some kind of an "internal" process of logical thinking-it-through - we really have to see what the world is like. That is a common sense and useful interpretation of "truth-in-practice". I am not sure that you can necessarily separate the belief from the action. Firstly the concept of dogmatism appears to be a 'positivist' attack on "non-scientific" belief systems. Natural science begins with certain assumptions about the nature of reality, which can therefore be tested.

Some propositions cannot be tested as they exist in the mind. Can we test to discover our own existence? no. it is the question of how we define existence or non-existence as an abstract concept that defines our existence. In practice, we cannot discover our existence or non-existence, but only the conditions under which we exist, based on the assumption that we do in fact exist.

[I'm clearly in Idealist territory here, opps!]


Originally Posted by Red Economist
This is a particular problem in social science (hence his criticism of historicism): if we argue X will happen in the future, the only way we can be sure is by trying to do X because humans are both observing a social-historical phenemona whilst being part of it. For a philosophical determinist, this 'proves' the validity of the original hypothesis, whereas for an indeterminist who believes in free will, it is a self-fulfilling prophesy which are person acted on in the first place. Consider the example of the prediction of crises of accumulation, or any other form of economic disturbance.

The picture presented above clearly doesn't hold since it would presuppose a sufficient economic basis for the researcher to act as a lever in this sense. How do you propose a Marxist criticizing contemporary political economy and studying the patterns of accumulation go about provoking the crisis?
What this means that the picture is very far from a self-fulfilling prophecy - it's that of people who study the development of accumulation and thus posit falsifiable theses. well spotted. my analysis is not consistent with the assumption that economics is objective and independent of the will of an individual.

however, whilst an individual Marxist cannot provoke a crisis, given that an economic crisis is a social phenomena, he may participate in the economic system in such a way as to accelerate a process which is already occurring.

e.g. take out a sub-prime mortgage, which adds to the overall quantity of debt within the financial system.


And finally, in conjunction with this problematic introduction of practice into play here, what would you say about the old Ptolemaic system making successful predictions? Does that mean that practice has confirmed it? not a clue! but I'm just guessing from a quick search on Wikipedia you mean the Geocentric model (where the earth is the center of the universe).

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


WIKIPEDIA

Two commonly made observations supported the idea that Earth was the center of the Universe. The first observation was that the stars, the sun, and planets appear to revolve around Earth each day, making Earth the center of that system. Further, every star was on a "stellar" or "celestial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_sphere)" sphere, of which the earth was the center, that rotated each day, using a line through the north and south pole as an axis. The stars closest to the equator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator) appeared to rise and fall the greatest distance, but each star circled back to its rising point each day.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#cite_note-2) The second common notion supporting the geocentric model was that the Earth does not seem to move from the perspective of an Earth bound observer, and that it is solid, stable, and unmoving. In other words, it is completely at rest.If the above statements are objectively true, (I'm not as astronomer) I would say that "Practice" has confirmed the Geocentric model and could make successful predictions.
What matters here is the paradign shift in recognizing that the apparent stationary position of the earth is not an objective phenomena (i.e the earth is not the center of the universe), but that this is a subjective phenemona (e.g. the stationary position of the earth is an optical illusion based on over-estimating the accuracy of man's sense data). Consequently, there is a change in the explanation of the 'cause' of the above objective phenomena with the new system.

This kind of illustrates my problem; a paradigm shift is a 'qualitative' change in human knowledge, whereas testing a hypothesis is an 'quantitative' accumulation in human knowledge. The concept of reality (the stationary position of the earth) is confirmed by the evidence until enough evidence is accumulated to get people to stop believing in it.
Falsification is not an objective quality of a hypothesis, but a subjective human 'stress-test' of individual belief. people just stop believing in a theory when the evidence reaches a certain point.


Marxism begins by making certain assumptions about the nature of society, which have logical conclusions; capitalism has internal contradictions, therefore it will end in a communist revolution.

And here we have a falsifiable thesis. Though, that depends on what do we consider "Marxism" (are there Marxisms?).
To reiterate what I wrote above, the assumptions from which Marxism (should) start(s) are real assumptions - living men and their mutual interaction in producing the means of production and subsistence and their social relations with it, as it is.
After the study of this specific society, the conclusion is that capital presents the barrier to capital accumulation - inherently crisis prone etc.

But the important point is that your conclusion, which implies the inevitability of communist revolution, is false and born from the specific teleological interpretation of the materialist conception of history and the analysis of capital. Indeed, there is good reason, common sense that is, to rely on historical experience and cast serious doubt over such idealist optimism.how do we know that real assumptions are in fact real without taking sides in a paradigm by which to demonstrate it? The current 'scientific' method and dialectics are not compatible with one another and are in conflict over the nature of beliefs about reality as objectivly derived from 'facts' or subjectively derived from a historically conditioned experience.

Is it not possible that materialism is just another form of idealism? Is Marxism/materialism not potentially teleological by beginning with apriori reasoning that the nature of the world is material and motion is dialectical? Materialism may be a philosophy and a product of the mind, rather than one which reflects the nature of reality in the mind. I am still not sure, as I feel that the position in the materialism-idealism conflict is the beginning not the end of human knowledge.

I have doubts as to whether a communist revolution will be successful; there is alot which has to be learned from the mistakes of the past. But I accept the 'inevitability' of communism [in the sense that it is a logical conclusion] based on my acceptance of dialectics and materialism as apriori reasoning which reflect the nature of reality as a result of my own experiences. [in much the same way a person observing natural phenemona may come to the conclusion that some underlying law is at work; whether that law is a 'divine' or 'scientific' one.]

I would not accept however the absolutist proof that it is a 'scientific law' (in the sense which is dogmatically presented today), but rather that the lack of supporting evidence means this may still be a subjective belief as opposed to an objective reality.
(i.e. I'm still at the stage of accepting Marxism as true, but not their yet).

[JimFar2]

Concerning Popper, as I pointed out in another time and place:

One Marxist school that attempted to deal with, if not answer Popper were the Analytical Marxists. It is interesting to note Popper's influence on the Analytical Marxist school, both positively and negatively. G.A. Cohen in his *Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence* makes no mention at all of Popper, and yet his book reads to me as a kind of reply to Popper, since Cohen attempts to reformulate historical materialism (or at least historical materialism as understood by the Second International) as a rigorous empirical theory of history. William Shaw (in *Marx's Theory of History*) and Dan Little (in *The Scientific Marx), on the other hand, do attempt to answer directly Popper's criticisms of Marxism, and they both draw upon Lakatos' critiques of Popper, in doing so. Jon Elster
in *Making Sense of Marx* presented a version of Analytical Marxism that was actually quite Popperian in tone, including an embracing of Popper's methodological individualism and rational choice approach to social science. Curiously enough, Elster makes no mention of Popper, and yet it is hard to imagine that he arrived at his views without
having drawn upon Popper.


In connection with the Analytical Marxian school there is another book that people may wish to look at on this issue, the unjustly neglected book *Analyzing Marx* by Richard W. Miller. In that book he draws a distinction between the technological interpretation of historical materialism which was articulated and defended by many writers of the Second International (i.e. Kautsky, Plekhanov) and which cast into an especially rigorous form by
G.A. Cohen in his *Karl Marx's Theory of History*, and what he calls the mode of production interpretation which abjures the technological determinism and
the economic determinism of the latter.


Miller draws a link between these two different interpretations of historical materialism and different philosophies of science. The technological interpretation, Miller links to positivist philosophies of science with their covering law models of scientific explanation and their presuppostion of Humean notions concerning causality. Here, Miller does not draw a very sharp distinction between positivism and Popperism. While Popper clearly did not see himself as being a positivist, he nevertheless, still had many notions in common with them. In Miller's view Popper's hypothetico-deductivism placed him within the positivist camp. In any case, Miller contends that the technological interpretation of historical materialism does represent the sort of theory that can be regarded as falsifiable from a strictly Popperian standpoint. Hence, it is scientific by Popper's criteria. The only
thing that is wring with it is that history has indeed (as Popper had contended) falsified it, and the other thing that is wrong with it, is that in Miller's view it represents a distorted interpretation of how Marx undertook the study of history and political economy.

The mode of production interpretation in Miller's view offers us a view that is closer to the spirit of Marx's actual methodology. But it is not falsifiable in the strict Popperian sense. One might then think that Miller would propose to throw away falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science but surprisingly enough he does not. Instead, he attempts to reconstruct the notion of falsifiability, drawing upon the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. He embraces their historicist approach to the philosophy of science and he develops a reconstructed version of the notion of falsifiability. The mode of production interpretation of historical materialism while perhaps not falsifiable in Popper's sense, is nevertheless falsifaible in Miller's sense and that justifies retaining the label of science for it. Miller also BTW contends that the postivist
(and Popperian) analysis of natural science is fundamentally flawed so that while the
positivists were quite correct in seeking a unified science which would assimilate the social sciences into the natural sciences , they misunderstood the nature of natural science. For Miller, the antipositivists were correct in attacking positvism for trying to force social science into a narrow mold centering around the covering law model and
deductive-nomological models of explanation and Humean causality, but the same flaws also applied to their analysis of natural science. In reality such an analysis, in Miller's view is not properly applicable to either natural science or social science.

[ckaihatsu]

Regardless of any possible ideological motivations, the call for using the 'falsifiability' criterion is simply a non-starter, or 'apples-and-oranges' when applied to Marxism and historical determinism....

This is because 'falsifiability' is being inappropriately applied to a topic of *social science* as though a lab process of *hard science* could be used for it.





Hypothesis: An hypothesis is a conjecture, based on the knowledge obtained while formulating the question, that may explain the observed behavior of a part of our universe. The hypothesis might be very specific, e.g., Einstein's equivalence principle or Francis Crick's "DNA makes RNA makes protein",[20] or it might be broad, e.g., unknown species of life dwell in the unexplored depths of the oceans. A statistical hypothesis is a conjecture about some population. For example, the population might be people with a particular disease. The conjecture might be that a new drug will cure the disease in some of those people. Terms commonly associated with statistical hypotheses are null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis. A null hypothesis is the conjecture that the statistical hypothesis is false, e.g., that the new drug does nothing and that any cures are due to chance effects. Researchers normally want to show that the null hypothesis is false. The alternative hypothesis is the desired outcome, e.g., that the drug does better than chance.




A final point: a scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable, meaning that one can identify a possible outcome of an experiment that conflicts with predictions deduced from the hypothesis; otherwise, it cannot be meaningfully tested.




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


*Social science* is better-served with the *inductive reasoning* process, by which a 'critical mass' of supporting data will allow the researcher to arrive at a conclusion / generalization about the data. If some existing data is *outlying* -- adding complexities and complications to the conclusion -- that doesn't necessarily mean that the larger conclusion is *invalidated*, it just means that there are 'shades of gray', or contingencies, bound-up with the abstracted generalization.

*Hard science* is better-served by the *deductive reasoning* process, by which incontrovertible results can be determined from various definitive tests, with *no* shades-of-gray, or nuance, involved.


Order - Complexity - Complication - Chaos

http://s6.postimg.org/s8yqs5zhp/130421_order_complexity_complication_chaos.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/s8yqs5zhp/)

[TaylorS]

A lot of good information in this thread, thanks! :)

I just remembered that Popper an active Marxist in his late teens and early 20s. I wonder how much his perception of Marxism was colored by interacting with "vulgar Marxists" who treated Marxism like a religious dogma, as well as the spineless double-think of the social-democratic parties in Germany and Austria in 1918?

[blake 3:17]

I've read some Popper and was very impressed. I see Marxism as an art, not a science.

[blake 3:17]

Won't go on to long, since I'm too ignorant, but I think Marx was right on a lot, and Marxism is right on a number of specific issues.

I guess I consider myself a half Marxist -- seeing the decommodification of labour as central to the struggle for socialism -- but consider myself more and more just a Socialist, Communist, or Anarchist.

[Thirsty Crow]

I just remembered that Popper an active Marxist in his late teens and early 20s. I wonder how much his perception of Marxism was colored by interacting with "vulgar Marxists" who treated Marxism like a religious dogma, as well as the spineless double-think of the social-democratic parties in Germany and Austria in 1918?
I don't think that this case can be made.

As far as I know, and you'll have to take my word for it since I don't recall the source in which I read this, he read some Marx, Engels, and excerpts from Lenin and Stalin.
And he dabbled in communist practice and theory for a whole 3-4 months. Precious experience and learning time, isn't it?

What is more important is his first hand account of the violence (and I think, murder of) against communist militants in Vienna in 1919, which had a decisive impact.

And just to briefly comment on one of the points raised by Red Economist (will try to cover the whole post at a later date):


how do we know that real assumptions are in fact real without taking sides in a paradigm by which to demonstrate it? I'm basing my position on Marx's observation about the real starting point of investigation - which can be demonstrated very easily, and empirically. If we claim that, due to for instance the prediction of the polarization of society into two classes, we demonstrate the correctness of this by reference to demographics through the lens of statistics, with obviously an explanation of categories used.

And if you here refer to the question of observable reality being real, I'd say that this is a non-problem, a pseudo-problem arising from the vagaries of traditional philosophy. Practical life and knowledge of this life and nature necessitates that we discard such eminently impractical and foolish questions.


The current 'scientific' method and dialectics are not compatible with one another and are in conflict over the nature of beliefs about reality as objectivly derived from 'facts' or subjectively derived from a historically conditioned experience.When I talk about the scientific method I merely talk about its most general prerequisite - propositions need to be checked against the way that the world is like.

All this talk about objective derivation and subjective derivation seem to me pretty meaningless.

Of course, historically conditioned experience is a way to describe society, but it is foolish to consider opinions about this society as only a matter of (class) perspective - the relationship between people can be studied apart from what they think about them, and even then you can study this in conjunction with what people think about their life without falling into the trap of idealism.

As for dialectics:


Is it not possible that materialism is just another form of idealism? Is Marxism/materialism not potentially teleological by beginning with apriori reasoning that the nature of the world is material and motion is dialectical? Sure, though then your practice of Marxism would be very different from mine.

This (my position) is mostly based on the mystifications of the so called dialctics, which I accept only if its based on a modest, and correct, claim that certain relationships are two-way - an element acting on another element, which then as a consequence acts on the former, and so on. Apart from this, notions such as universal interconnection (and motion being "dialectical", whatever that could mean) belong to the dustbin of traditional philosophy.



*Social science* is better-served with the *inductive reasoning* process, by which a 'critical mass' of supporting data will allow the researcher to arrive at a conclusion / generalization about the data.
To sort of play the devil's advocate here, how could you operationalize the notion of "critical mass" in relation to supporting data?

[baronci]

I've read some Popper and was very impressed. I see Marxism as an art, not a science.

How is marxism an art? :confused:

[Thirsty Crow]

How is marxism an art? :confused:
Telling stories as obtaining knowledge...of sorts.

Really, this defeatism is riduculous. One guy comes up with a philosophy of science, which is deliberately built to exclude Marxism and is in fact inconsistent* and poof, we're novelists.

*Here I refer to the final word of Mr. Popper on Marxism, which was forced by his own student's criticisms (Imre Lakatos), which can be summed up as that ad hoc justifications, supposedly of a singular nature - to deliberately make the theory unfalsifiable - of theoretical mispredictions actually make it a pseudoscience. One would have to wonder whether Popper produces any actual evidence for this claim. If not, or if the evidence is patchy, biased, one cannot help but wonder whether this specific falsificationism is much more than a strategy against the burden of proof requirement for rabid anti-communists.

And not only this. One should take a look at the proposed scientific theory of society that the man advances - and the mess he gets himself into by proposing a general law which he claims is both unfalsifiable and false, at the same time. Sure, all the staggering evidence and logic against Marxism is piling up!

[argeiphontes]

I think apples and oranges is right, LinksRadikal, for reasons along the same lines as yours. I'm not intimately familiar with Popper's argument but I would put forward this tentative criticism:

For whatever reason, perhaps philosophical, Popper is afraid of a Marxism of science. He suspects it's true that if a science of Marxism is possible, then so is a Marxism of science. To avoid this trap, he has to deny that Marxism is a science and at the same time elevate science into a discourse about the validity of Marxism, giving rise to the demand that historical materialism be falsifiable on empirical grounds.

But this is just a trick, since in fact science and historical materialism stand in an egalitarian relationship toward each other. Science is a method; it makes no statement as to the content of disciplines that proceed according to the method. The same, I think, is true of historical materialism; it is a way of knowing and not a known, in the same way that hermeneutics has no particular content to defend.

So, in another thread on Cultural Marxism, we see the method applied to other disciplines such as psychology (Fromm) and history (Jameson). Only such particular contents, having been discovered through application of historical materialist method, can be subject to falsification. You can't use reified "science" to judge historical materialism.

That's all I've got, YMMV. :)

edit to add: So yes, as someone stated, the real question would be whether HM results in knowledge of events, the same way that science "works" by providing knowledge of the physical world.

[Red Economist]

Quote:
The current 'scientific' method and dialectics are not compatible with one another and are in conflict over the nature of beliefs about reality as objectivly derived from 'facts' or subjectively derived from a historically conditioned experience.
When I talk about the scientific method I merely talk about its most general prerequisite - propositions need to be checked against the way that the world is like.

All this talk about objective derivation and subjective derivation seem to me pretty meaningless.
Its down to the demarcation line between science and pseudo-science based on what we believe can be known and what is real. The scientific method is itself the product of a historical change in thought and will continue to be subject to change. It is not the product of an objective reason, but once began as a historically conditioned philosophical belief that propositions needed to be checked against the body of evidence. (when I'm not sure, but Ancient Greece probably if not in it's modern form during the age of reason and the enlightenment).

The problem with the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity is a problem of drawing a line between science and philosophy when the two are interdependent on the other as the product of human social practice. Marxism begins in the realm of the philosophy of mind (courtesy of Feurbach whose challenge against religion was that it was a projection of man's alienated qualities). Marx turns idealist philosophy (mind>matter) on it's head to get materialism (matter>mind). In doing so, Marx redefined the boundary of objective reality so that the mind became determined by material/socioeconomic conditions, where as before it had a 'free' existence which was not determined by material environment.
He shifted the boundary of Science further into what would traditionally have been the realm of philosophers and deduced that human social interactions determined social consciousness. In doing so he increased the horizon of man's potential knowledge of nature and society.

Popper's idea of making a hypothesis falsifiable was a very conservative (and arguably a destructive and reactionary) point of view. An attempt to increase the scope of the scientific reasoning in the sense Marx did, redefines reality by arguing that instead of consciousness being the product of the mind, it is in fact determined by the material conditions of society. This increases the scope of what can be known about society. In the process, the boundary between objectivity and subjectivity, between what we believe can be known and what kind of reality is perceived is redrawn.

[ckaihatsu]

*Social science* is better-served with the *inductive reasoning* process, by which a 'critical mass' of supporting data will allow the researcher to arrive at a conclusion / generalization about the data.





To sort of play the devil's advocate here, how could you operationalize the notion of "critical mass" in relation to supporting data?


Hmmmm, not quite sure what you mean by 'operationalize [...] critical mass' -- it would depend-on and vary case-by-case, of course.

To use an everyday example, consider a person's wardrobe -- at what point would you call it 'theirs' -- ? When the person is a child such decisions over clothing are entirely in the hands of whoever's raising them, with increasing input (likely) from the person themselves as they grow up and assert their own individuality over the matter. And, perhaps, even with a fully 'autonomous' wardrobe, a person might still include articles of clothing that are gifts from others, and so not entirely of one's own choosing. Would one 'gift' in a collection invalidate the *entire* collection as being 'theirs' alone -- ? How many, or what percentage, of gifts in a collection *would* be the 'critical mass' that indicates a loss of controllership over one's own wardrobe -- ?

[ckaihatsu]

[S]cience and historical materialism stand in an egalitarian relationship toward each other. Science is a method; it makes no statement as to the content of disciplines that proceed according to the method. The same, I think, is true of historical materialism; it is a way of knowing and not a known [...]




So, in another thread on Cultural Marxism, we see the method applied to other disciplines such as psychology (Fromm) and history (Jameson). Only such particular contents, having been discovered through application of historical materialist method, can be subject to falsification. You can't use reified "science" to judge historical materialism.




[T]he real question would be whether HM results in knowledge of events, the same way that science "works" by providing knowledge of the physical world.


philosophical abstractions

http://s6.postimage.org/i7hg698j1/120404_philosophical_abstractions_RENDER_sc_12_1.j pg (http://postimage.org/image/i7hg698j1/)





Marx redefined the boundary of objective reality so that the mind became determined by material/socioeconomic conditions, where as before it had a 'free' existence which was not determined by material environment.




[T]he boundary between objectivity and subjectivity, between what we believe can be known and what kind of reality is perceived is redrawn.


Worldview Diagram

http://s6.postimage.org/axvyymiy5/120824_Worldview_Diagram.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/axvyymiy5/)

[Comrade Sun Wukong]

The problem with Popper's falsification criterion becomes apparent when you see that what he says about historical materialism also applies to theory of evolution. He belongs in my opinion to same group of anticommunists as Hayek - their criticism within the limits of their argument may be logically sound, but their premises themselves are false. Both Popper and Hayek set up a vulgar idealistic model of Marxist thought and counterpose to it idealistic liberal-capitalistic counterargument, neither of which has anything to do with actually existing world.

Yes, Popper also claimed the theory of evolution was unfalsifiable. lmao

[Comrade Sun Wukong]

Most of mathematics seems "unfalsifiable" as well, if you take it to mean it must be "falsifiable" by some sort of real-world experiment or observation.

[Thirsty Crow]

Most of mathematics seems "unfalsifiable" as well, if you take it to mean it must be "falsifiable" by some sort of real-world experiment or observation.
If this is correct, then that would mean that pseudoscience can function as the basis of scientific practice.

I don't think that anyone should be very happy with this result. It's very odd how a pseudoscience might work that way.

This means that the debate is rigged from the start - the demarcation problem, science versus pseudoscience. A Popperian might backtrack and try to claim that obviously mathematics doesn't fall into the category of pseudoscience but hey, the goals and concepts have been set, haven't they? Deal with it or go all the way back and try again, scrapping this theory.

[RedMaterialist]

Karl Popper in his book The Open Society And It's Enemies criticizes Marxism as being an unfalsifiable "totalizing ideology", claiming that we can dismiss any criticism as bourgeois ideology. This is part of his more general critique of "Historicism".

This is something that has really bothered me for a while. because I can't see anything wrong with his argument.

Falsification of gravity: Find a planet which would not attract small rocks.
Of the speed of light: find a beam of light which travels faster than 186k m/s.
Of the transmission of disease by virus: inject someone with botulism and he lives.
Of evolution: find 25 million year old human bones living in the same strata with dinosaurs.
Of HM: find evidence of wages being paid for work 15k years ago.

[argeiphontes]

philosophical abstractions

Yes. It's a defense of HM though, so here's more of the same:


Most of mathematics seems "unfalsifiable" as well, if you take it to mean it must be "falsifiable" by some sort of real-world experiment or observation.

That's because mathematics is also not a science. It's a giant tautology, all derived from certain premises, and is not contingent on anything external to itself. It's all *necessarily* true in the same way that deductive logic is necessarily true. Math provides knowledge of the physical world only through an uncanny correspondence between mathematics and physics, not because it has anything to do with empiricism in itself.

[blake 3:17]

Telling stories as obtaining knowledge...of sorts.

Really, this defeatism is riduculous. One guy comes up with a philosophy of science, which is deliberately built to exclude Marxism and is in fact inconsistent* and poof, we're novelists.

And what's wrong with novelists?

I will admit a bias, having far more friends who are novelists than scientists, and that I am an artist not a scientist. Feel free to go ad hominem, though that's not very good science.

[Strannik]

Falsification of gravity: Find a planet which would not attract small rocks.
Of the speed of light: find a beam of light which travels faster than 186k m/s.
Of the transmission of disease by virus: inject someone with botulism and he lives.
Of evolution: find 25 million year old human bones living in the same strata with dinosaurs.
Of HM: find evidence of wages being paid for work 15k years ago.

But in real world, no scientist would reject theory of gravity or relativity based on these observations (as Popper's criterion demands). Instead the science tries to expand the existing theory to include these observations as special cases. Evidence of wages paid 15k years ago would also not invalidate general theory of historical materialism - what if there was a village that was ahead of others in historical development? So Popper's criterion does not seem absolute in practice. There are some other characteristics that let us consider something "scientific".

[ckaihatsu]

Most of mathematics seems "unfalsifiable" as well, if you take it to mean it must be "falsifiable" by some sort of real-world experiment or observation.





If this is correct, then that would mean that pseudoscience can function as the basis of scientific practice.


I'm not finding your comparison to be valid -- this thread is raising the point that *entire domains* of study have 'a priori' status, like math, and also science, drama & comedy, and art & music, I would argue. Since one cannot do anything scientific outside the domain of science -- by definition -- the domain is unfalsifiable and therefore "false" (a contradiction, as you pointed out in post #17).





If this is correct, then that would mean that pseudoscience can function as the basis of scientific practice.


Perhaps you're onto something in terms of *form* -- that science and pseudoscience, however applied, both operate in the same *way*, irrespective of the actual content and its validity.





I don't think that anyone should be very happy with this result. It's very odd how a pseudoscience might work that way.

This means that the debate is rigged from the start - the demarcation problem, science versus pseudoscience. A Popperian might backtrack and try to claim that obviously mathematics doesn't fall into the category of pseudoscience but hey, the goals and concepts have been set, haven't they? Deal with it or go all the way back and try again, scrapping this theory.

[ckaihatsu]

But in real world, no scientist would reject theory of gravity


Btw, just what *is* the theory of gravity -- ? How is there able to be action-at-a-distance, despite the void of space being in-between -- ?

[RedMaterialist]

But in real world, no scientist would reject theory of gravity or relativity based on these observations (as Popper's criterion demands). Instead the science tries to expand the existing theory to include these observations as special cases. Evidence of wages paid 15k years ago would also not invalidate general theory of historical materialism - what if there was a village that was ahead of others in historical development? So Popper's criterion does not seem absolute in practice. There are some other characteristics that let us consider something "scientific".


I think the falsification analysis is that if you can't imagine a situation which would disprove your theory, then the theory is not scientific. All the examples I gave are, I think, examples which would disprove each theory.

Yes, if you could find evidence of a village existing 15k years ago which had wage labor and its neighbor used a gift economy or barter, then yes, that would disprove HM. Which is why HM is a scientific theory.

[argeiphontes]

Yes, if you could find evidence of a village existing 15k years ago which had wage labor and its neighbor used a gift economy or barter, then yes, that would disprove HM.

How so?

[RedMaterialist]

How so?

Wage labor develops only after a long and complex process, taking thousands of years. First comes slavery, then feudalism, then capitalism and wage-labor. Each stage "develops" historically and materially (economically) from the previous stage. Although, according to Marx, there may be simpler and less developed systems of payment by wages; for instance, Marx maintained that the first use of money being paid in wages was payment to soldiers in the Roman army. This would be analogous to more developed humans living at the same time as simpler humans (neandertals). You, of course, could find simpler humans living among modern humans, Rambo, for instance, just as there are forms of slavery (sex) existing today.

Thus, if you could find a village in Germany from, say, 15 thousand years ago, and there was evidence of payment for labor in money per hour, for instance, that would be absolute proof that historical materialism is not a valid scientific theory. Just like if you could find bones of humans living in the same strata as dinosaurs (a picture of Jesus riding a dinosaur doesn't count) then evolution would have been proven false, it is falsifiable. Thus, the falsifiability theory of Popper. I think most scientists and philosophers have abandoned this theory.

[RedMaterialist]

Btw, just what *is* the theory of gravity -- ? How is there able to be action-at-a-distance, despite the void of space being in-between -- ?

Simple, it's not a void in space, the space itself is distorted. The usual visual example is a trampoline: if you put a heavy bowling ball in the center of the trampoline, you can start a tennis ball going around the bowling ball in a kind of orbit, ultimately falling into the center. The bowling ball is not pulling the tennis ball inwards, the space around the bowling ball is being distorted which affects the orbit of the tennis ball.

[argeiphontes]

I appreciate the response.


Thus, if you could find a village in Germany from, say, 15 thousand years ago, and there was evidence of payment for labor in money per hour, for instance, that would be absolute proof that historical materialism is not a valid scientific theory. Just like if you could find bones of humans living in the same strata as dinosaurs (a picture of Jesus riding a dinosaur doesn't count) then evolution would have been proven false, it is falsifiable.

But in *what way* does the village falsify HM? In the case of Jesus riding the dinosaur (love that one btw :laugh:) , it's fairly obvious. What's the counterfactual that goes with HM and the German village?


Wage labor develops only after a long and complex process, taking thousands of years. First comes slavery, then feudalism, then capitalism and wage-labor. Each stage "develops" historically and materially (economically) from the previous stage.

Is HM really about the specifics of this, or is it the method by which we develop causal claims about these facts, since they've been subject to HM analysis after their development? (In retrospect, its showable that X developed because of A material ground. But isn't HM really the method of looking into material grounds for all developments, not just claiming that capitalism necessarily developed out of feudalism, which is a particular claim about empirical reality? That *is* falsifyable.

So if HM is a science, then yes, I agree, it's falsifyable. However I would argue that these claims arise from HM method in the same way that claims about the Big Bang arise from science. It's not science that's falsifyable but the theory about the Big Bang.)

[RedMaterialist]

But in *what way* does the village falsify HM? In the case of Jesus riding the dinosaur (love that one btw :laugh:) , it's fairly obvious. What's the counterfactual that goes with HM and the German village?


Historically and economically (HM) wage labor, according to the theory, did not begin to develop until after feudalism. Thus, hunter-gatherers were not paid in wages for finding stuff to eat. They would have thought it kind of strange if they brought their deer back to camp, handed it over to a distributor who paid them 10 shells per hour for their time. And then the "wealth creator" sold them the same deer meat, cut up into pieces, for 20 shells, which is how wage labor works. However, if you could find evidence this happened, it would disprove HM.



Is HM really about the specifics of this, or is it the method by which we develop causal claims about these facts, since they've been subject to HM analysis after their development? (In retrospect, its showable that X developed because of A material ground.

This is, I think, a fairly accurate description of dialectical materialism


But isn't HM really the method of looking into material grounds for all developments, not just claiming that capitalism necessarily developed out of feudalism, which is a particular claim about empirical reality? That *is* falsifyable.



HM is a theory which explains how social and economic development happens because of the specific, real, concrete (i.e., material) ways that humans produce their own existence. This development happens over time (i.e., historically.)

HM is the method of explaining history and (social) economic development. Evolution is the method of explaining biological development. One difference between the two kinds of explanations is that economic development is bound up with the vilest human urge there is, self-interest (Marx.) Evolution is finally accepted everywhere except in some of the more remote (well, everywhere I guess,) parts of the U.S. south.

To the extent both HM and biological evolution use the same philosophical scientific method, I would say it is that everything has a source, a change in structure, and then changes into a new form, and that nothing simply is there fully developed from the beginning.

Economics professors who defend capitalism maintain that capitalism has existed from the beginning of time, essentially. HM is the difference between the ideal of capitalism and its actual development, or the ideal origin of humans in the Garden of Eden, and their real biological development.

[argeiphontes]

HM is a theory which explains how social and economic development happens because of the specific, real, concrete (i.e., material) ways that humans produce their own existence. This development happens over time (i.e., historically.)

HM is the method of explaining history and (social) economic development. Evolution is the method of explaining biological development.

You're right, it is like evolution. This is the point where I lose my argument I think... :crying:

[ckaihatsu]

Btw, just what *is* the theory of gravity -- ? How is there able to be action-at-a-distance, despite the void of space being in-between -- ?





Simple, it's not a void in space, the space itself is distorted. The usual visual example is a trampoline: if you put a heavy bowling ball in the center of the trampoline, you can start a tennis ball going around the bowling ball in a kind of orbit, ultimately falling into the center. The bowling ball is not pulling the tennis ball inwards, the space around the bowling ball is being distorted which affects the orbit of the tennis ball.


Yeah, thanks, and that's great and everything, and I've seen / heard it before, but it's just not satisfying. Putting forth a visual / kinesthetic *metaphor* does not make for a solid *theoretical* explanation. 'Space is warped' implies a "hyper-physics" (my wording) that would have to exist, like a 4th dimension, beyond the 3rd, in which 3rd-dimension physical effects like gravity would manifest. What physical force, exactly, does the 'trampoline' represent that causes motion in other objects, due to mass alone -- ?

[Karlorax]

here is a famous essay by Karl Popper where he ridicules Marxism as a pseudo-science because, according to Popper, whenever Marxists observe something that falsifies Marxism, instead of throwing out Marxism (as we would with a scientific hypothesis), Marxists simply invent an ad hoc explanation for why the observation does not count as a true falsification. In other words, according to Popper, Marxism can never be falsified; so it is not a true science. According to Popper, it is more akin to religion. What Popper says about Marxism fits revisionism exactly. It fits First Worldism, pseudo-Marxism. There has never been anything close to a socialist revolution in the First World. Even after a century of First Worldist “socialist” activism of all kinds, even after huge economic downturns and depressions, the First World “socialist” movement is not an inch closer to revolution. Again and again, First World workers align for imperialism, for capitalism (in both its American form and and European social democratic form). For all the talk of “mass line” among the First Worldists, they are incredibly hard of hearing. Listen to your own beloved constituency. Look at them as they are, not as you would like them to be. The socioeconomic facts about world cannot be wished or willed away. Facts are stubborn things. No matter what kind of falsifications First Worldism encounters, First Worldists simply say that the reason First World workers do not make revolution is because they are suffering from false consciousness, they are brainwashed, etc. We’ve shown the First Worldists that First World workers receive more than the value of their labor. We have shown First Worldists that they receive more than an equal share of the global social product. We point to the history of the revolutionary movement, to the many Third World revolutions and the complete lack of anything like a First World revolutionary movement of any size, let alone any First World socialism. We point to the behaviors, the self-descriptions, the psychology that First World workers share with the imperialist bourgeoisie. The simple fact is that Popper was right about the religious nature of First Worldism. He was right about revisionism. There simply is no empirical fact, no observation, that will shake a First Worldist’s belief that the First World peoples are a vehicle for socialist revolution. Whenever a First Worldist encounters a falsification, they make an ad hoc excuse. What would it take for the First Worldist to toss First Worldism? What kind of economic investigation would it take? What kind of event? What kind of observation? Is there anything that would shake his faith in the First World peoples? Just as no fossil can shake the faith of the believer, no evidence can shake the faith of the First Worldist. Popper is right about First Worldism. First Worldists are not a scientists. Their approach to the world is basically religious. Nothing can shake their faith. How

http://llco.org/first-worldism-and-poppers-challenge/

I think they make a good point. Is there anything that could falsify the conviction that First World people are a proletariat? And does this mean most orthodox Marxism is just really metaphysics?


__________________

Currently reading, dare to join me? I am no Leading Light Communist, but I am studying their work for my MA thesis

Leading Light on Conspiracy Theory is Intelligent Design (http://llco.org/leading-light-on-conspiracy-theory-is-intelligent-design/)
Was Lin Biao guilty plotting a coup? Part 1 of 2 (draft) (http://llco.org/draft-was-lin-biao-guilty-plotting-a-coup-part-1-of-2/)
Revisiting Value and Exploitation (http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation/)
What about the Gulag? Mao’s errors? Stalin’s? (http://llco.org/revolutionary-history-initial-summations/)

[Jimmie Higgins]

http://llco.org/first-worldism-and-poppers-challenge/

I think they make a good point.Do you think FOX news makes a good point when it says there are no poor in the US because people have air conditioners and playstations? When they confuse ownership of the means of production with personal property? Their assumptions are identical except one thinks it's a virtue and proof that capitalism is in the interests of people and the other thinks it's a vice. But both are based on a total misunderstanding of capitalism; both confuse the constant restructuring and shifts that happen in capitalism for some new era; both argue that a kind of austerity is necissary when the fact is that capitalism is a society of surplus and vast wealth.


Is there anything that could falsify the conviction that First World people are a proletariat?Ha, I love having someone working on their Masters tell me about how I'm not actually a worker and am a capitalist, first of all. But at any rate, it's not a conviction, it's a description. This could be right or wrong, but I think that the alienation and exploitation described by Marx and others is the most clarifying way to understand what goes on in this society despite major differences in conditions between the 1860s and today.

The "working class" is an abstraction - an abstraction of what? Social relations. So in theory, how could this be tested? Well I guess if for some reason capitalists did not want to employ as many laborers, then we could see if there was suddenly a massive increase in small businesses and no increase in unemployment - that would uphold the 3rd worldist and FOX news view that everyone in Europe or the US is middle class and falsify the classification of laborers as people who are exploited and need to sell their labor to support and reproduce themselves. I guess we'll never know:rolleyes:

IMO it requires mental-gymnastics to argue that people having a place to live and transportation to work so they can then pay for that car and that house so they can return to work and so on - is the same as owning stores and machines and hireing others to work. It also ignores the massive personal debt that most workers have as well as the structural necessities of a car and so on due to the way capitalism has structured production and housing in places like the US. There are big differences within countries and among general populations of differnet countries, yes, but these differences are surface features compared with how someone supports themselves and reproduces themselves (which is the same in China as in the US despite differnet levels of living standards).


when Paris workers had a general strike then went back to the factories in exchange for double-digit raises.Their arguments are cirrcular. "There are no workers in the first world and the evidence of this is the lack of struggle; they don't struggle because they have it good; but when they do struggle they get raises which proves that they aren't workers..?" So when workers don't struggle, it's proof that they aren't workers, but if they do struggle it's also proof that they are "social-fascists" and therefore not workers. Hmmm. How does logic like that relate to this thread I wonder... sounds like the conviction that people in the first-world aren't workers is unfalsifiable.

[Fred]

I think it is a reach to call Historical Materialism a hard science, like physics. It is a "social science" one that is immensely helpful in understanding history and what happens today in the world. I don't think that diminishes HM one iota. Popper was an idealist -- his notion of things falsifiable is okay with regard to Physics, Optics and Chemistry, but pretty worthless where one can't actually do true experiments to empirically validate hypotheses. This has a lot to do with the limits of empirical validation in general. The central problem is that when something one is examining has more than a few variables it becomes increasingly impossible to study. A real world simple example is medication. If a person is taking one medication -- the effects can be studied cleanly -- either by doing pre and post testing, or by having a set of subjects taking the med and a comparable set of subjects taking a placebo. If you have two meds (a two-way interaction) that's harder, because you now have three possible agents (independent variables), med 1, med2, and med 1x2. Add a third and you now have 6 independent variables med1, med2, med3, med1x2, med2x3, med1x2x3. At 5 different meds you have 15 independent variables. Now this is studying something relatively simple, effects of medications. How dicey does this get when you are looking at history:crying:

The point about mathematics is well taken, btw. It is based far more on rationalism than empiricism -- that is, it begins with the idea, not with things that are observable. Works pretty well, though. Plato, a serious rationalist, was convinced that our senses are not reliable, ergo, the only true knowledge came from pure thought. It was only with the coming of capitalism that empirical study in science became the norm.

One more point. HM is a method -- so finding an anomaly like an ancient village where wages were paid would not "disprove it." It would require further understanding of how something like that might happen. But I agree that the probability of something like that happening is between zero and nil.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Here's a thought - if a planet were discovered that somehow had no gravitational attraction of its own, I imagine the process would look something like this:

1. Check and test the observation equipment, it might be generating errors.

2. If the equipment checks out fine, continue observations and look in the literature for special cases or circumstances that might explain how what is being observed could happen - for example, if further observations of the behaviour of the planet include repelling objects with mass as well as merely not attracting them, then we might well have discovered the first known example of naturally-occurring negative matter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass).

3. Try to find further examples of such anomalous objects - the more the better. Whether or not current theoretical work is able to explain/predict them, the more examples the better we are in terms of being able to modify the current model of gravity or build a new one from scratch.

4. If it turns out there are more than one of these kind of anomalous objects, which don't conform to any theoretical models or predictions, now would be good time to start building a new model of gravity or at the very least, make some major and fundamental modifications, because the model is clearly inadequate in its current form.

The point is that in both Marxism and astrophysics, one anomaly of unknown provenance is insufficient grounds for dumping anything - there has to be a consistent pattern that current models are unable to explain. So archeological evidence of one village in ancient times with wage-labourers is no threat to the Marxist model of history, and even multiple examples could be explained satisfactorily if their known circumstances fall within the bounds of the Marxist framework. But if an entire society or civilisation were found to follow this anomalous pattern, then it would be high time to apply the methods of historical materialism in reconsidering the structure of the Marxist framework.

[RedMaterialist]

Yeah, thanks, and that's great and everything, and I've seen / heard it before, but it's just not satisfying. Putting forth a visual / kinesthetic *metaphor* does not make for a solid *theoretical* explanation. 'Space is warped' implies a "hyper-physics" (my wording) that would have to exist, like a 4th dimension, beyond the 3rd, in which 3rd-dimension physical effects like gravity would manifest. What physical force, exactly, does the 'trampoline' represent that causes motion in other objects, due to mass alone -- ?

Well, that's the best explanation that I've heard. They say that the mass of an object causes a distortion in the geometry of space/time, but I'm only an amateur. I suppose you could check out Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

[RedMaterialist]

[QUOTE=ÑóẊîöʼn;2662156]Here's a thought - if a planet were discovered that somehow had no gravitational attraction of its own, I imagine the process would look something like this:

/QUOTE]

If you found a massive planet or star with smaller mass objects nearby which did not behave the way gravity (either Newtonian or Einsteinian) predicts, then
you would have to modify the theory of gravity. But, I don't think that is the point of the Popperian test. The falsifiability test is that if you cannot predict or imagine a way that the theory could be proved false then the theory is not scientific.

Thus, Popper said it was impossible to imagine a way to prove that evolution was false, therefore, Popper believed evolution was not a science. It's very easy to show a way to disprove evolution, all you would have to do is find modern human bones living in the same geologic strata as dinosaurs.

Popper's theory of falsifiability has been completely discarded today. No astronomer who discovers a new exo-planet, begins by asking herself, "How could I falsify the theory of exo-planets?" She would check her data, her instruments, check her math, then publish her work, offer it for critique by peers in her field. Then if independent observations and experimentation confirmed her findings then her conclusion would be scientifically valid.

[RedMaterialist]

One more point. HM is a method -- so finding an anomaly like an ancient village where wages were paid would not "disprove it." It would require further understanding of how something like that might happen. But I agree that the probability of something like that happening is between zero and nil.

On the contrary, finding such village would disprove HM. The point for Popper is that he could not imagine a scenario in which HM (and, as well, biological evolution) could be disproved. For him the two theories failed the falsifiability test.

Popper is dead, Marx and Darwin live on.

[RedMaterialist]

[QUOTE=Karlorax;2662112]http://llco.org/first-worldism-and-poppers-challenge/

I think they make a good point. Is there anything that could falsify the conviction that First World people are a proletariat? And does this mean most orthodox Marxism is just really metaphysics?



What exactly is the "First World?" In 1789 France was one of the leading countries of the world, and they had a successful peasant revolution which was taken over by the bourgeoisie; following that there were unsuccessful workers' revolutions in France and in Europe in 1848, and again in 1871. Russia was one of the cultural and intellectual centers of the world, and in 1917 it witnessed the first successful workers' revolution. The idea of a first world, second world, third world, is extremely racist, classist, and imperialistic. I'm surprised any college class still even uses the classification.

In 1929 the so-called "First World" was on the verge of becoming the "Third World." Capitalism decided it had better spread the wealth around to avert a Russian style revolution. Thus began social security, unemployment compensation, and later, health care for seniors, etc. The modern welfare state is capitalism's answer to Marx. It is beginning to look more like the welfare state is collapsing. When it does then the proletarian nature of the first world working class will make itself felt.

Marxism is based on reality; capitalist economic theory (such as marginal utility and opportunity cost) is entirely metaphysical.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

If you found a massive planet or star with smaller mass objects nearby which did not behave the way gravity (either Newtonian or Einsteinian) predicts, then
you would have to modify the theory of gravity. But, I don't think that is the point of the Popperian test. The falsifiability test is that if you cannot predict or imagine a way that the theory could be proved false then the theory is not scientific.

Thus, Popper said it was impossible to imagine a way to prove that evolution was false, therefore, Popper believed evolution was not a science. It's very easy to show a way to disprove evolution, all you would have to do is find modern human bones living in the same geologic strata as dinosaurs.

Surely then Popper was wrong about A) the falsifiability of evolution and therefore B) the scientific status of evolution?

If such is the case, then it would seem likely that Popper was similarly suffering from a failure of imagination when it came to the issue of falsifying Marxism.


Popper's theory of falsifiability has been completely discarded today. No astronomer who discovers a new exo-planet, begins by asking herself, "How could I falsify the theory of exo-planets?" She would check her data, her instruments, check her math, then publish her work, offer it for critique by peers in her field. Then if independent observations and experimentation confirmed her findings then her conclusion would be scientifically valid.

I'm not saying that anyone specifically sets out to falsify a scientific theory. Indeed that isn't even necessary, since if enough anomalous observations are made that cannot easily fit into the current framework, then that framework becomes increasingly useless with each inexplicable anomaly discovered and at some point must be modified or replaced. I used exoplanets and models of gravitation as examples in order to point out how discoveries in one sub-field (Exoplanetology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanetology)) could have implications for models pertaining to the wider field of physics in general.

[RedMaterialist]

[QUOTE=ÑóẊîöʼn;2662231]Surely then Popper was wrong about A) the falsifiability of evolution and therefore B) the scientific status of evolution?

I'm pretty sure Popper thought that biological evolution was not a science.

[Fred]

On the contrary, finding such village would disprove HM. The point for Popper is that he could not imagine a scenario in which HM (and, as well, biological evolution) could be disproved. For him the two theories failed the falsifiability test.

Popper is dead, Marx and Darwin live on.

Something occurring by magic would disprove historical materialism. Something anomalous would not -- at least not necessarily. If a bunch of villages got together and developed a capitalist system with exchange values etc., and managed to exist for more than ten minutes, well that might do it.

Popper was never that important. Marx and Darwin were/are giants.

[Tim Redd]

Karl Popper in his book The Open Society And It's Enemies criticizes Marxism as being an unfalsifiable "totalizing ideology", claiming that we can dismiss any criticism as bourgeois ideology. This is part of his more general critique of "Historicism".

This is something that has really bothered me for a while. because I can't see anything wrong with his argument. A proven theory should be able to be falsified if things change such that it is now false. That is how I have interpreted Popper. Most of the rest is bourgeois academic drivel.

Edit: a hypotheses by its very nature has yet to be shown true or false. But I guess more importantly it miss capable of being shown to be true or false.

[argeiphontes]

HM would only be disproved if the village's econ system didn't arise for material reasons.

Also, "proletariat" doesn't have anything to do with HM except that HM is used to explain its development. Something else could have happened if there were different material grounds for it.

Edit: HM is a paradigm, a Copernican revolution begun by Marx. The reason its not the dominant paradigm in the social sciences is ideological. All this makes sense if we believe Kuhn I guess.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I'm pretty sure Popper thought that biological evolution was not a science.

Yes, I know. But I was pointing out that Popper was wrong to think that, since evolution can be falsified, for example if we were to discover an organism with features that have no antecedents in earlier examples, something completely novel that could not have arisen through the stepwise tinkering of natural selection. It's a minor quibble, but in the absence of strong evidence that time travel is impossible, I don't think finding human remains in the same strata as dinosaurs would be enough to count against evolution, especially if said remains display anatomically modern traits.

[ckaihatsu]

My understanding of the 'unfalsifiable' critique is that no theory should be the 100% 'go-to' theory that explains *everything*, because then you have a cult. So, for example, if people say that everything is because of "God", then it's unfalsifiable and it's unscientific.

The charge is made against Marxism in the manner of saying that Marxism describes all social phenomena as being based in the class division -- then the answer to "Why do I feel a little more uneasy on Mondays" can, according to this charge, be answered with Marxism's "It's in some way because of the class division."

This is how Marxism is dismissed as being 'unfalsifiable', because a revolutionary *could* make a linkage of arguments that connects sluggish Mondays to the existence of the class division.

I'll maintain that this "problem" of "unfalsifiability" is due to Marxism's *success* as a coherent, consistent explanatory framework, especially concerning social phenomena, and especially at the most macro scales.





We could call Marxism a 'societal paradigm', and also call religious thought a 'societal paradigm' -- the difference is that religion has already been historically manifested, whereas Marxism has not.

It's easy to see why people would accuse Marxism of being a religion, because it's paradigmatic, but it *is* scientific in its method and can also develop its repertoire by analyzing continuously unfolding world events.

Additionally, Marxism is *integrative* and *comprehensive*, and cuts against the prevailing *reductionistic* approach contained in most scientific perspectives.

Anything that's so paradigmatic, or all-encompassing, can be difficult to get a grasp on, since it can be unwieldy in its totality.


And, f.y.i, here's the entry from Wikipedia....





Falsifiability or refutability is the trait of a statement, hypothesis, or theory whereby it could be shown to be false if some conceivable observation were true. In this sense, falsify is synonymous with nullify, meaning not "to commit fraud" but "show to be false". Science must be falsifiable. The scientific method can not be implemented without the theoretical possibilities of both disproof and verification.

By the problem of induction, no number of confirming observations can verify a universal generalization, such as All swans are white, yet it is logically possible to falsify it by observing a single black swan. Thus, the term falsifiability is sometimes synonym to testability. Some statements, such as It will be raining here in one million years, are falsifiable in principle, but not in practice.[1]

The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience.

In falsificationism, an unfalsifiable and thus unscientific theory is not necessarily intrinsically false or inappropriate, since metaphysical theories might be true or contain truth, but one cannot know for sure. Simply, to be scientific, a theory must entail at least one observation, which may or may not be the case.




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

[La Comédie Noire]

Popper is some weak-ass shit, and, ironically, simply presents the flip-side of the vulgar-Marxist coin, where social life is confronted as "atomic" rather than as a totality. His social thought, not surprisingly bares striking similarity to his ahistorical understandings of science, premised on an ever-progressive falsification, rather than a social movement of paradigms.

All of this just reminds me of how badly I need to get around to reading Thomas Kuhn.


Popper actually goes a long way of critiquing this very view of society deriding it as "psychologism" and even praises Marx for his enlightened view of social phenomena.

Also I'm pretty sure he didn't propose falsifiability as an explanation of how science is done, but a proposal for a program of how science should be done. It was what he believed was a solution to the problem of induction.

It should be noted he admits right up front that a lot of theories have unfalsifiable components to them.