[Marxism] Marxism, Science- Reply to Rob

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rob,

I disagree with the following. Of course Marxism, as social science, does
not produce 'Newtonian' laws, since human beings can consciously effect the
laws determining their (social) existence, whilst solar systems cannot.
Nevertheless, Marxism does involve elucidating general laws governing the
development of society- it is an attempt at an objective analysis of those
laws in the same way that Darwin attempted to objectively elucidate the laws
governing the evolution of species. The more developed higher species can
consciously affect the evolution of their species, yet this, in itself, does
not invalidate evolutionary laws or the attempt to formulate general
evolutionary laws. Marxism is more scientific than pragmatic, and I do not
think that Marx's intention was solely to provide useful ammo for the
burgeoning working class movement. He genuinely believed it was possible to
postulate generally applicable laws concerning the development of social
forms. There are many examples of Marx doing this, including his belief in
the fundamentally economic foundations of society, his concept of ideology,
his concept of class, his conceptual distinction between the forces and
relations of production, and his many 'laws' of capitalism (including the
law of the falling rate of profit, the theory of crisis, the theory of
imperilalism, etc.). If Newton was a scientist, then so was Marx. All
science is dynamic, provisional, and related to its practical evolution-
this fact does not, in itself, render the whole notion of science
meaningless.
I think, in the West, the critique of economistic or deterministic
(cultural) Marxism has gone far enough, and needs to be reigned in a little.

Cheers.

ROB WROTE:

> Marxism is in no sense reducible to a system of "Newtonian" laws. This
> would
> involve much false abstraction- false abstraction which does, I believe,
> dog
> the worst kinds of Marxist thought- the type of thought I wish to criticise
> as that which dubs itself "orthodox".
> This is not to denigrate the scientificity of Marxist thought; it is, in
> fact, to emphasise what is
> strongest about it. Just as grammar cannot be thought of as a system of
> "laws" which determine language without being part of it, but should be
> thought of as a description of the functioning of the living body of
> language from within that language, and one which assists us in our
> meaningful action within that language, Marxism must be understood to be
> wholly and dynamically within the world that it describes, and not
> "objective" in the limited sense of conventionally conceived science. I
> would argue that this intrinsically involves that it must be dialectically
> open to the future, and to it's own transformation. Dialectical thought is
> always as provisional as it is objective, and this is it's greatest
> strength; indeed, that which defines it as "dialectical" in the strongest
> sense. Marxism and it's most valuable inheritance, to put it most crudely,
> must be science "on the fly"; analysis from within the context of action,
> and knowingly subject to that context.

.

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