[Marxism] If Marxism is a science...

[Tony Hartin <t.hartin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for raising the level of discussion again. I'm certainly not
going to tell you that society should be as certain as astronomy, but
you know even something that seems as cut and dried as gravitation is
certainly not that cut and dried, its just that the level of uncertainty
in prediciting the time of sunrise in 2050 is very low - but not zero.

But lets take something like meterology. Is it a science? Yes, I think
so. Is it predictive? Only with quite large uncertainty. Is it worth
thinking of it as a science and trying to improve its predictive powers?
- yes. But it also might be the case that weather systems are
fundamentally chaotic within predictive boundaries.

Why can't the study of society be thought of like that? Or the economy?
If the economy cant be understood scientifically then how can we ever
even talk of a planned economy? Part of the problem with economic
analysis at the moment, IMO is that the data useful for marxist analysis
is rarely gathered - because is being gathered largely by capitalist
economists

cheers,
Tony

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