Marxism and Metaphyics?

[Malesori]

For Marxists here how do you explain away the accusation that Marxism, especially in its traditional Hegelian variety is a metaphysical system?

[Sabot Cat]

Well, if one reads pretty much any of Marx's oeuvre one finds primarily economic observations and theories, in conjunction with sociological descriptions and prescriptions. Marxism embodies within it a political ideology and a framework for various social science disciplines; it does not address metaphysics outside of precluding such speculation as an object of study or basis of action.

[motion denied]

First of all, if anyone should prove anything, it's that one who asserted such non-sense.

How is marxism metaphysical if Marx's premise was the following:



The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.
[...]


In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.



Marx's "method" intends to reproduce ideally the objective reality. Therefore, it can't be metaphysical.