RE: [Marxism] Mark Lause on sociology as "unscientific" and"bourgeois"

["Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Statistics are not scientific in and off themselves, though they may
always be presented as scientific.  Several times, in this discussion,
I've clearly questioned the categories of these statistics, to which
Jurriaan responds, "You did not 'question' anything, you just said
sociology as discipline is 'bourgeois' and 'unscientific'."

...So, let's try again, then.  The numbers on automobile production
leave no question about what a car is.  Numbers on how many people are
in positions that are supervisory, managerial, employing,
self-employing, etc. are not so clear cut.  They should raise questions
about what how these terms are defined.

Jurriaan angrily sought to personalize this discussion by introducing my
career, asserting that I am "no less bourgeois" by virtue of my
employment than the professors with whose ideology I take issue.  When I
respond, I am guilty of "citing irrelevancies about his career."

In the United States, we have just had an NLRB ruling aimed at
destroying the organizing efforts of graduate students and part-time
college professors.  A large portion of college classes today--it varies
by discipline--are taught by grossly overworked and underpaid adjunct
faculty.  To get by, they often have to patch together a couple of
courses here, a couple there, and maybe some more in a third
institution.  Far from getting what Jurriaan calls "a fat salary," they
earn less than grade or high school teachers--or some workers in a fast
food restaurant.

The power structure--the industry, if you will--backed by the power of
the courts--defines the lot of the professoriate as "professionals"
rather than "workers" and blocs their unionization.  In short, all
professors belong to the same class as Henry Kissinger.  ...or, as
Jurriaan argues, no professor can claim to be less bourgeois than the
professors whose ideological assumptions I am attacking.

I disagree with both Jurriaan and with the government's NLRB.  Labels
don't define things so simplistically.

As to Mike's question (which has just popped up), my views on the
distinctions between hard sciences and the social scientists are fairly
traditional.  Obviously, social scientists can approach specific
problems with a scientific rigor and, in cases like physical
anthropology, you have scientific techniques applied in specific areas
where they are very applicable.

Darwin's theory of evolution can't be scientifically tested or verified
in terms of the past, but we have all sorts of empirical evidence for
it.  When we get away from the hard sciences, it seems to me that the
test of evidence should vary, depending on what sort of evident might
reasonably be available to us.  It seems to me that breakthroughs of all
sorts in DNA work is providing phylogenetic systematics with new kinds
of empirical proofs.  I have personally just been blown away over the
last few years with the incredible amount we've learned on human origins
and diffusion.

On the other hand, Darwin's ideas godfathered the rise of the social
sciences through the ideology of "Social Darwinism."  There were many
variants of this (including some radical versions of it), but it was
fundamentally ideological and supportive of the prevailing class.  The
idea of survival of the fittest became a justification for racial and
national supremacism...and class hierarchies.

A good example of this is the assumption underlying Jurriaan's
gratuitous insult: "No wonder then you don't earn a 'six digit salary'.
If you did some real research, instead of talking about 'bourgeois this'
and 'bourgeois that' blah-blah you might earn more."

This touching faith that hierarchy in the bourgeois social order
reflects fitness is a perfect example of the legacy of Social
Darwinism...and the reason we have to think critically about the
assumptions and categories of social sciences.

Solidarity!
Mark L





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