Valid arguments against Marxism

[RedWorker]

I'm a Marxist. Please give me some valid arguments against Marxism. I don't care if this comes from tendencies such as anarchism or from non-leftists. It can also come from Marxists who know of some reasonable arguments. So far, I have been unable to find any convincing argument against Marxism or any of its of components. Thank you.

[Rafiq]

Marxism is omnipotent because it is true. If you want valid arguments against Marxists, there are plenty. Mechanicism, adhering to fatalism (that all events lead to Communism), mystification of dialectics (and its improper usage), blatant utopianism, and I can go on.

[Tim Cornelis]

I'm not sure what you mean by valid or convincing. And I don't know what Rafiq means. But of course there are some reasonable or compelling arguments. The integration of the working class into capitalist society, the absence of naked class oppression and class contrast, as argued by the revisionists, is quite a reasonable objection. The unfalsifiability of Marxism is a challenge. Rival value theories are complex and comprehensive and therefore challenging.
But we wouldn't regard them as valid otherwise we wouldn't be Marxists.

[bropasaran]

First you have to say what you mean by Marxism. What Marx wrote and advocated, or what various other people wrote and advocated and called that Marxism? Once you do that I'll give you multiple not only valid but also sound arguments against Marxism. In fact, I am pretty sure that there are no sound or valid argument for Marxism, I've found none in my plentiful readings, and I asked multiple times, and no one has anything to offer. Rarerly any Marxist can even precisely define Marxism.

[Creative Destruction]

I've found none in my plentiful readings, and I asked multiple times, and no one has anything to offer.

You've done no such thing. What you have done is construct straw arguments (including "supporting" these arguments with out-of-context quotes) and asked people to refute them, based on what your viewpoint of Marxism is and what he said.

[Tim Cornelis]

Marxism is the method of class analysis based on a materialist understanding of social development. It's not what Marx of self-style Marxists wrote. It's a specific methodical approach to social analysis.

[Rafiq]

the absence of naked class oppression and class contrast, as argued by the revisionists, is quite a reasonable objection.

It's true that that might be a reasonable explanation as for the insignificance of Communist politics today, but that is hardly an argument against Marxism. Marxism never postulated that naked class oppression exists - on the contrary, if naked class oppression existed, no class society would ever have existed.

Also, again, Marxism is "unfalsifiable" because it is true. All social, cultural theory would be impossible if it had to abide by the same method of precise trial and error that postulations about the natural world did. That would be ridiculous. But even then,

The reason why Marxism might not be unfalsifiable is because Marxism isn't itself one big hypothesis or even theory. Marxism is a result of the usage of the scientific method with regard to an understanding of the world. If Marx wasn't constantly utilizing a scientific approach, if Marx simply declared things that no one could disprove - he most likely wouldn't have changed his views the way he did from his association with the Young Hegelians up until he wrote Capital. All of Marx's theories, or his understanding of the world was built through a scientific understanding of the world.

[Redistribute the Rep]

I'm not really sure what people mean when they say Marxism is "unfalsifiable". It's my understanding that falsifiable means that one can conceive of an observation that would disprove it. Well, one could refute Marxism if they provided evidence that something other than class struggle is the driving force of history, or maybe that there is no driving force and historical events are random. Looks pretty falsifiable to me.

[Loony Le Fist]

I'm not really sure what people mean when they say Marxism is "unfalsifiable".

It means that you cannot develop a conclusive test that will demonstrate it is false. They would be correct. However, what those same people often fail to realize is that all social sciences (including economics, like Austrianism, Keynesianism and the rest) suffer from that same problem. It's something everyone has to live with.

[Rafiq]

It means that you cannot develop a conclusive test that will demonstrate it is false. They would be correct. However, what those same people often fail to realize is that all social sciences (including economics, like Austrianism, Keynesianism and the rest) suffer from that same problem. It's something everyone has to live with.

No one has the mechanisms to create experiments that emulate historical development. We can, however form conclusions based on logical consistency.

[bropasaran]

You've done no such thing.

I've done it many times. You being willfully blind and ignoring facts that refure your preconcieved notions isn't my problem.

Marxism is the method of class analysis based on a materialist understanding of social development. It's not what Marx of self-style Marxists wrote. It's a specific methodical approach to social analysis.

And that approach for analysis is defined by whom?

@OP

As I said, say what you mean by Marxism, and maybe add what you think are arguments for it.

[Tim Cornelis]

No one has the mechanisms to create experiments that emulate historical development. We can, however form conclusions based on logical consistency.

It means that you cannot develop a conclusive test that will demonstrate it is false. They would be correct. However, what those same people often fail to realize is that all social sciences (including economics, like Austrianism, Keynesianism and the rest) suffer from that same problem. It's something everyone has to live with.

That's not what falsifiability means. For instance, if we state that there is a trade off between unemployment and inflation, and we look at the empirical data and see no such trade off, it'd be wrong. Therefore, this hypothesis is falsifiable.

Falsifiability is a basic pillar of the scientific method. The absence of laboratory experiments means it's not an exact science, not that it's not falsifiable.

I've done it many times. You being willfully blind and ignoring facts that refure your preconcieved notions isn't my problem.

You are being willfully blind and ignoring facts that refute your preconceived notions.

You keep going on about how Marx claimed workers can't manage production, based on some out of context quote which doesn't really say what you claim it says. Your claim is directly contradicted by an abundance of citations by Marx explicitly stating that wage-labour will be replaced by cooperative labour of freely associated producers.

For instance, Marx speaking on workers' cooperatives you so adore and uphold as superior to Marx's evil authoritarian nationalisation: "there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of labor over the political economy of property. We speak of the co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories raised by the unassisted efforts of a few bold “hands”. The value of these great social experiments cannot be overrated. By deed instead of by argument, they have shown that production on a large scale, and in accord with the behests of modern science, may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands; that to bear fruit, the means of labor need not be monopolized as a means of dominion over, and of extortion against, the laboring man himself; and that, like slave labor, like serf labor, hired labor is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labor plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous heart. In England, the seeds of the co-operative system were sown by Robert Owen; the workingmen’s experiments tried on the Continent were, in fact, the practical upshot of the theories, not invented, but loudly proclaimed, in 1848."

All you do is distort and misinterpret, and when confronted with undeniable refutations of your nonsense you continue. At this point, you're not only parodying Marxism, you are making anarchism look bad by looking like a bad parody of one, what with your hysterical anti-authoritarian, anti-Evil-Marxism. You remind me of those right-wing libertarians that have completely made their minds up about Marxism, ridiculing it with ridiculous strawmen.

And that approach for analysis is defined by whom?

...? Me? People? Academics? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[Palmares]

Marxism is omnipotent...

Upon first read, I honestly read "impotent"...

But I digress.

To be honest, this is a pretty weird thread. It's kind of backwards, in the sense that you're asking for proof against something rather than supporting evidence. Marxism is the premise, so it follows it's the conclusion. Similar to the ways theists argue for proofs against theism based on their pre-conceived premises.

As a result, I think there's more potential in this thread for Marxism self-criticism, rather than ideologically divergent criticisms given the framing.

I don't think I can thus contribute much more to this thread, though, I would be interested to ask, when you mean "valid" arguments, do you mean in a polemical sense?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm not really sure what people mean when they say Marxism is "unfalsifiable".

Don't worry, the same is true of whoever mentioned "unfalsifiability" first.

This "criterion" comes from Popper, whose theories are rejected by modern philosophers and sociologists of science, but who is massively popular among pop-sci writers, professional skeptics, and so on. How it's supposed to work is that one negative experimental result should lead to the theory being discarded.

Now, there are two problems with this. The first, and more serious one, is that is has absolutely nothing to do with how science is actually done. If theories were discarded after one negative experimental result, the general theory of relativity would have been discarded after the first experiments trying to measure the bending of light.

The second problem, of course, is that "experiment" and "theory" aren't independent, isolated categories - in particular, every experiment is theory laden in that the experimental scientist needs to assume some theory to interpret the experimental record - things like the position of a dial need to be connected to things like potential differences and so on. So there is never one interpretation of an experiment.

These are just some of the reasons no one who studies science for a living takes naive falsificationism seriously anymore. Its prevalence in pop-sci is the only reason anyone still discusses Popper, to be honest.

[mojo.rhythm]

It's a tough question, and it really depends on what you mean by 'Marxism'.

But as a Trotskyist, reading The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control by Maurice Brinton threw up some of the toughest objections I have ever dealt with. Some of the revelations spelled out in that book really gave me pause and made me nervous.

Moreover, there are things about Marxism in general that I find a little bit distasteful, but don't necessarily constitute arguments against Marxism per se. The vicious, and almost petulant levels of sectarianism between groups I find hard to stomach sometimes, especially when the divisions arise from totally trivial semantic issues. The use of fancy terms and polysyllabic phrases when they are completely unnecessary. The inherent tendency to label people with slightly conflicting opinions as being an 'x-ist', or an advocate of 'x-ism' and using that to make them the Other not worthy of consideration. The tendency to just cast off arguments against our position as "right-wing nuttery" without actually responding and refuting the arguments (members of my organisation do this all the time and it drives me crazy). The general ossified feeling of being 'stuck in the past', and refusing to use new, updated vocabulary and semantic framing to describe political events. The refusal to acknowledge that we fall prey to groupthink and bias just like any other organization.

The criticisms and complaints I just mentioned are but a mere footnote compared to all the positives however. I want to strongly emphasize that 100,000 times over!

[Redistribute the Rep]

To be honest, this is a pretty weird thread. It's kind of backwards, in the sense that you're asking for proof against something rather than supporting evidence. Marxism is the premise, so it follows it's the conclusion. Similar to the ways theists argue for proofs against theism based on their pre-conceived premises.

I'd have to disagree. I think the OP just wants to hear some honest, well thought out critcism of Marxism, which is pretty hard to find since anyone you debate or find on the internet is either libertarian or a "Stalin killed 100,000,000 people" or "it looks good on paper, but..." All of whom are easily rebuttable and aren't well researched at all. This thread doesn't mean the OP doesn't base their beliefs on supporting evidence; probably quite the opposite. I certainly wouldn't compare it to theists since they usually say stupid shit like "well, can you disprove of God? Checkmate, atheists!" even though it's impossible to disprove. They use people's inability to disprove of an invisible being as evidence that one does in fact exist. That's not what the OP is doing; they just want to read some opposing viewpoints.

[Rafiq]

To be honest, this is a pretty weird thread. It's kind of backwards, in the sense that you're asking for proof against something rather than supporting evidence. Marxism is the premise, so it follows it's the conclusion. Similar to the ways theists argue for proofs against theism based on their pre-conceived premises.

No, Marxism is not the premise. The development of Marxism is the summation of detailed and comprehensive studies, research and a scientific understanding of their implications. I find your logic inconsistent - what thought-system or system of ideas does not have a premise that it "follows it's the conclusion"? If you are an anarchist, than certainly you do not hold anarchist theory in pertinence to the state, and so on exempt form this? Even the very basis of science and rationality, any scientific paradigm (even the scientific method) - has a "pre-conceived premise' which it follows. This is the nature of ideology itself, in a way. The question is: How can we decipher truth from the relative? Consistency and motive.

The problem is that we HAVE provided proof - the point is that because we have provided proof, because this job has been done, if you have a problem with it you have to postulate arguments against it, or whatever you like. For example, concluding that the theory of relativity is true is not "following an unsupported pre-conceived notion to its end" - the point is that its premise is supported, and is certainly grounded in truth (or at least our current best conception of it).

Again, the problem with Marxism isn't that there can be no mechanism by which it can be falsified. The development of Marxism is marked by many decades of scientific application to the history of the social (for example). Marx actively changed his ideas based on new understandings, and Marxism itself has evolved, and strengthened itself based on changes in the world to this day. Theism, or religion, conversely, isn't a theory or a postulated explanation for existence alone. It is a social mechanism - religion itself didn't come out of someone's ass, the problem with theism isn't just that it's not scientific, it's that it's predictable. We can identify the nature of god and how specifically it is a projection of the human mind relative to different social epochs. It's not what they believe, it is why they believe that is of relevance. So the question goes - Why did Marx believe.

If Marxism posits a premise (which, frankly, I find difficult to understand. There is not a single premise posited by Marxism by which all conclusions are deduced) - how, necessarily is this premise wrong? For Darwin, the premise is that all species possess a common ancestor, that their differences exist through hundreds of millions of years of processes of natural selection in accordance with survival - this is just as "unfalsifiable" as the premise of materialism is. Why? Because it is true.

If Marxism is simply finding patterns throughout history, or if it is simply a hypothesis which is not verifiable, then it sure is rather mystifyingly sophisticated as a hypothesis if history actively validates its "premise". At the end of the day, Marxism does not impose anything new upon the function of society. All Marxism is - is to define that which was previously undefined. Marxism gives a name to processes and and phenomena which already exist.

[mojo.rhythm]

For Darwin, the premise is that all species possess a common ancestor, that their differences exist through hundreds of millions of years of processes of natural selection in accordance with survival - this is just as "unfalsifiable" as the premise of materialism is. Why? Because it is true.

Darwin's theory of evolution can be potentially disproven. For example, if we discovered rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian strata, that would be an observation fundamentally incompatible with evolution by natural selection.

[Rafiq]

Darwin's theory of evolution can be potentially disproven. For example, if we discovered rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian strata, that would be an observation fundamentally incompatible with evolution by natural selection.

But we didn't. That's the point. If we discover complex and sophisticated written language, the existence of the state, and so on in pre-Neolithic societies, this would have same effect.

The problem is that Marx's theories were the first of their kind: he simply defined things we already know to have happened, and gave their conceptualization a scientific character. A scientific understanding of history simply did not exist before him. Marx's writings in the 18th brumaire, for example, cannot be disproven because they actually happened (the same goes for Capital). Engel's Peasants war in Germany was not based on archeological findings, but written texts found during that time. If a new, third party account would have contradicted everything, the book wouldn't hold up. What exactly about Marx's ideas, in your mind, are unfalsifiable in way comparable to theism? Materialism? Finding a direct connection between changes in culture, the state and ideology and changes in the fundamental basis of survival is simply adding a scientific paradigm to something no one bothered with earlier.

[Tim Cornelis]

I'm sorry Rafiq but you simply don't understand what falsifiability is. "we didn't [find evidence contrary to the theory of evolution]". Obviously, otherwise the theory would've been discarded. The point of falsifiability is that premises are position or articulated in such a way that they can potentially be disproven. For instance, Freudian psycho-analysis is unfalsifiable. The Oedipus complex, for instance, is unfalsifiable. If you agree that it's correct, it's because it's correct. If you disagree with it, you disagree with it precisely because it is correct. So it can't be refuted.