On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Charles Brown
<charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This was the argument of the philosopher Karl Popper, who claimed
> that
> Marxism is unscientific because it "is not refutable by any
> conceivable
> event." According to Popper:
> In some of its earlier formulations.[the] predictions [of Marxist
> theory]
> were testable, and in fact falsified.
Is Marxism a scientific theory? I don't know but I have another question: who cares? Everyone has their own definitions of "scientific" and even well-known ones like Popper's are far from being unambiguous.
Why get into this game of trying to win cheap prestige for a subject by claiming scientific status for it? The only thing that really matters is: Is theory X *useful* as an intellectual device in making sense of observed facts? Marxism is useful. Freudism is useful. For that matter neo-classical economics is useful too. Is that not a good enough reason to study and understand something?
-raghu.
--
"I have a heart of a child... in a jar on my desk." - Stephen King