Does Marxism being "scientific" matter? Or does this need to want to cling to science to prove its legitimacy actually hinder its effect? I've been wrestling with this question for the past day and I still don't have a concrete opinion.

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[–] FungiDebord@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It's probably not a science, using a falsifiability criterion for "science". (See Popper.) I don't think that's controversial -- Marxist informed hypotheses could be tested and discarded perhaps, not Marxism itself.

Because it's more than that. It's a explanatory model, it's a body of knowledge, with core normative concerns and areas of study. It is, god forbid, a practice; it isn't a disembodied law which regulates the world unarticulated, but which has been apprehended at a particular historical moment, and which motivates and creates a World precisely because it has been apprehended and articulated. (I would conceive of this as it's dialectical character.)

It's not poorer for this; its just a different kind of thing.


I'd be curious to read anyone's opinions on a traditional, Hegelian inflected Marxism with "analytic Marxism" (I've not read Cohen; I wonder if he tries to "ground" Marxism in more "common sensical" empiricism, and whether this makes it more similar to falsifiable science).

[–] ingirumimus@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

lol this is more or less what I was trying to say but much more clear and concise. I think you're absolutely right: Marxism is a methodology, and one that has to be applied differently at different places and times to be effective. Its a tactical mistake to think of it as a science

[–] FungiDebord@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ty and well said. Any concision is just the result/blessing of my not having had engaged w/ Theory in a long time.