Is Marxism a science?

[Dermezel]

Golden Dysprosium

This lovely graph should give you a visual example.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Non_Transformation.png
Although, I suppose I should dumb it down even further. Let's say it take you 5 minutes to make a sandwich, which sells for $3.00. After a week, you can make the same $3 sandwich in 2 minutes. According to Marx, it's value would change. But it doesn't. It's still the same $3 sandwich, whether it takes you 2 minutes or 8 hours. This is what the graph clearly illustrates. The change in labor results in the curvature, which coincides with the first formula above (rlA=blah blah blah), which was gleamed from Marx's notes, as it was his example.
Do you understand?

Actually in Chapter 1 of Capital Marx notes that it is socially necessary labor that determines value. Going extra slow to make the sandwich will not effect the price your competitior sells it at, or make your employer pay you higher wages. Likewise, whether or not you can make a sandwich in less time will not effect price if others can do likewise.

[whateverfloats]

Seriously guys, how do you falsify it?

[Golden Dysprosium]

Dermezel

Before I go to specific replies I think I should note that my opponents (primarily Golden) have used 3 extremely dubious sources/arguments, primarily from the far right-libertarian types.

Like the dictionary? neutral

Oxford Dictionary

Marxism
• noun the political and economic theories of Karl Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95), later developed by their followers to form the basis for the theory and practice of communism.

An internationally recognized system of etymological categorization and definition has nothing on Marxism.org or the countless indy free-market anarchist sites you referenced. rolleyes

Kikarok

Dermezel

1- Ayn Rand site. Capitalism.org was presented as having definitive arguments against the labor theory of value. Capitalism.org is an Ayn Rand front site.

I find it interesting that you have not attempted to actually discredit points made by the site, but rather chose to write it off as a "front," as if that would render all information on it false and useless.

It's actually as bad as the sites he references, and I only referenced it once as a comparative joke.
His constant blathering about Capitalism and why it's wrong is seemingly based on "the Austrians said their stuff was untestable, but Marxists say their stuff is", which is idiotic because those economics as a whole are untestable.

[Dermezel]

Golden Dysprosium

Dermezel

Well all that seems to say is that the editor doesn't personally like Marx.

Actually, a lot of the contributors (i.e scientists, economics PhDs, etc) to that site don't like Marxism. I was smart enough (unlike yourself, who should've check for Anti-Marx sentiment beforehand) to check the site's credibility (which I always do), one would (correctly) assume I'd run a search for Marxism to see if they actually support it, as you've claimed. And they don't.
Which is what made me search it in the first place. I found it odd that A: you submitted a site that wasn't blatantly against Capitalism and B: a panel of economics experts would support Marxism. Clearly, neither they nor their site do. Also, it seems the person I "quoted" is highly reputable in his own right, as the White House and Pentagon don't hire just anyone as a consultant.

That was kind of the point. If I had just quoted Marxists, from say China, they'd be dismissed as "ideologues". Never mind that you are pretty much dismissing a country of 1.2 billion people. The fact remains regardless that the economists' I quoted are compelling not because, but because they are not Marxist, yet their evidence and reasoning points very much in the same direction as Karl Marx.

This is what you call an convergence of evidence, meaning that independent investigation is starting to lead to the same conclusion.

[Morgris]

Marxism would be part of a social science. His conflict theory is commonly taught in sociology classes.

[Dermezel]

whateverfloats

Seriously guys, how do you falsify it?

Okay, before we begin we have to look into what we mean by "falsify". In Science this usually means that you try to stick to parsimony and avoid any ad hoc hypothesis. In other words, you can argue that any theory is "non-falsifiable" if you don't put in rules like "you can't make extra assumptions" or "the theory that makes the least necessary assumptions, while remaining coherent is preferred". This is the case because you can justify any theory if you are allowed to make an infinite amount of assumptions, or stop making sense/including data.

Remember science is about parsimony and coherence.

That is what is meant by marginal utility is unfalsifiable. The marginalist is allowed to exclude data and make up an infinite amount of assumptions, even spiritual and metaphysical assumptions like absolute free will.

Marxism is different because it makes predictions that can be directly tested. Predictions like:

1- The economy will centralize over time.

Thus If the economy becomes less centralized, that would be a point against Marxism. The Marxist at this point could try to explain this failure of the theory, i.e. make an assumption to preserve coherence but this would make it weaker then any theory that didn't do this. Luckily there is a wealth of data which shows that the economy has become more centralized over time, particularly in the forms of economic institutions like the IMF/World Bank/WTO, international banks, and international corporations.

Wal-Mart's effects on local stores in particular illustrates this point.

2- The relative value of wages will decrease over time i.e. labor will become more efficient, and thus, more expendable.

This point would be disproven if wages, as a percentage of a nation's GDP, increased. However as I noted earlier, wages have actually decreased as a percentage of the US GDP.

Quote:

Wages, meanwhile, have fallen from 51.8 percent of GDP in 1960 to 45.6 percent in 2006.

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm012808oth.cfm

This can also be ascertained, less directly, by looking at the value of wealth held by the lower classes (who's income primarily comes in the form of wages) vs the higher classes, who attain a greater portion of their income through stocks, bonds and general company ownership:

Quote:

Table 1: Distribution of net worth and financial wealth in the United States, 1983-2007
Total Net Worth
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1983 33.8% 47.5% 18.7%
1989 37.4% 46.2% 16.5%
1992 37.2% 46.6% 16.2%
1995 38.5% 45.4% 16.1%
1998 38.1% 45.3% 16.6%
2001 33.4% 51.0% 15.6%
2004 34.3% 50.3% 15.3%
2007 34.6% 50.5% 15.0%

Financial Wealth
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1983 42.9% 48.4% 8.7%
1989 46.9% 46.5% 6.6%
1992 45.6% 46.7% 7.7%
1995 47.2% 45.9% 7.0%
1998 47.3% 43.6% 9.1%
2001 39.7% 51.5% 8.7%
2004 42.2% 50.3% 7.5%
2007 42.7% 50.3% 7.0%

Quote:

Table 3: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2007.
Bottom 99 percent Top 1 percent
1922 63.3% 36.7%
1929 55.8% 44.2%
1933 66.7% 33.3%
1939 63.6% 36.4%
1945 70.2% 29.8%
1949 72.9% 27.1%
1953 68.8% 31.2%
1962 68.2% 31.8%
1965 65.6% 34.4%
1969 68.9% 31.1%
1972 70.9% 29.1%
1976 80.1% 19.9%
1979 79.5% 20.5%
1981 75.2% 24.8%
1983 69.1% 30.9%
1986 68.1% 31.9%
1989 64.3% 35.7%
1992 62.8% 37.2%
1995 61.5% 38.5%
1998 61.9% 38.1%
2001 66.6% 33.4%
2004 65.7% 34.3%
2007 65.4% 34.6%

Quote:

Table 5a: Concentration of stock ownership in the United States, 2001-2007
Percent of all stock owned:
Wealth class 2001 2004 2007
Top 1% 33.5% 36.7% 38.3%
Next 19% 55.8% 53.9% 52.8%
Bottom 80% 10.7% 9.4% 8.9%

Table 5b: Amount of stock owned by various wealth classes in the U.S., 2007
Percent of households owning stocks worth:
Wealth class $0 (no stocks) $1-$10,000 More than $10,000
Top 1% 7.4% 4.2% 88.4%
95-99% 7.8% 2.7% 89.5%
90-95% 13.2% 5.4% 81.4%
80-90% 17.9% 10.9% 71.2%
60-80% 34.6% 18.3% 47.1%
40-60% 52.3% 25.6% 22.1%
20-40% 69.7% 21.6% 8.7%
Bottom 20% 84.7% 14.3% 2.0%
TOTAL 50.9% 17.5% 31.6%

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

This is basic economic logic- the more efficient the overall economy, the less workers you need (because each worker is now more efficient) and the less you need to pay them (since the employer has more leverage). That means the people who dependent on wages will see a gradual decrease in income, the people who depend on stocks and bonds will see an increase in income.

The only way to reverse this trend is by artificially managing the economy- increasing minimum wage, progressive taxation, etc.

If this trend generally changed without government intervention, then that would help falsify Marxist theory.

3- The organic composition model, simply put, machinery replaces human labor over time. I hardly need to explain how this is proven, though the presence of the jobless recovery in recent years should serve as confirmation: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/Politics/story?id=7966402&page=1&page=1

Quote:

Krugman has been one of the most vocal opponents of the stimulus package the president signed in February, long arguing the $787 billion price tag was inadequate to lift the country out of recession.

"The last two recessions were both followed by prolonged jobless recoveries when industrial production and GDP rose, but the unemployment rate continued to rise," he said, "We're almost certainly headed for another patch like that this time around which means that we need the economic support more than ever."

This is very complimentary with point 2- the more machines you have to replace people, the more efficiently you can use labor, the less workers you need (and the less you need to pay them consequently. )

The alternative to this is often called the "theory of compensation" that is, the idea that "new frontier jobs" are always created as machinery is implemented. The problem with this reasoning is three-fold:

1- It is idealistic to presume that for every job taken by a machine, exactly 1 new job is created. If 1,000 jobs are lost due to technological advance, it would be an amazing coincidence if 1,000 new jobs are magically created the next day. The idea that even more jobs are created then taken however would conflict with the data- the relative value of wages declining, and the existence of jobless recoveries.

2- This is the idea that the machine, within a line of production actually creates more jobs. The "well you need someone to make the machine" argument. The problem with this is that it goes against the very logic of the economy- if it takes 2 jobs to make a machine that replaces 1 job- you end up spending more money on the machine then you get for replacing the worker. In other words, machines that regularly employ more people in a line of production then they replace will not be adopted by industry. The only exception to this would be if the machine ends up displacing more jobs in the long-term.

3- The idea of "frontier jobs" or new markets opened by machines, or opening naturally which will attract the organic labor (humans). The problem with this is much like 1, it is based on an idealization that requires many assumptions and coincidences. For example, even if a new market opens, why can't machines be put into the new market? If we find a new type of commodity X, wouldn't it be more efficient to start with factory based, assembly line production, rather then resort to crafting each new product individually by hand? If a new market opens in say China, is it more efficient to use the machines we already have, or literally go back to pre-industrial modes of production? Basically the assumption is you cannot extend machine production to new markets.

If this was reversed, say machines stopped evolving, or we somehow lost the technology to make machines, or human evolution naturally just went into a hyperactive state that surpassed machines Marx's theory would become less relevant to real life economics.

Of course, artificial methods could reverse the above. Remember Marx's theory applies to capitalist development, not socialistic intervention.

4- The cost of production.

Simply put, this is a Ricardo-Marxist axiom that unless you regularly pay for the cost of production you cannot maintain an economy. A business that does not pay its expenses will go under. A society that never pays for its debt will see economic collapse.

This may seem untestable like gravity or natural selection, but it could be disproven if there is a bizarre change of physical laws, though that would have to be the case regularly for it to disprove the law.

Note that marginalism doesn't even have a theory regarding some of the above aspects of economy, so one could argue that not only is it less parsimonious, it is also less cohesive given the full range of empirical data.

[Dermezel]

Golden Dysprosium

because those economics as a whole are untestable.

I disagree with this because with economic theories you are dealing with real observables and general patterns.

For example, you can measure, using quantitative data, whether or not the relative value of wages increase or decrease over time. Whether or not the economy is more or less centralized over time. Whether or not machinery is more productive then raw human labor, and to what degree.

Arguing economics is untestable is presuming there is some sort of supernatural element to it, or no general patterns at all.

[Morberticus]

Jaysus dude give it a rest. Marxism isn't rigorous enough to be considered a science, I thought we covered that.

Quote:

This may seem untestable like gravity or natural selection, but it could be disproven if there is a bizarre change of physical laws, though that would have to be the case regularly for it to disprove the law.

I don't understand this sentence.

[Hristis]

Well, Marxism itself is surely no science on it's own - but it's a part of many other disciplines and influences them a lot. For example, you can do Marxism-Criticism in literature, or certain approaches by marxist people in subjects like pedagogics and many more; then of course it plays a big role in sociology, philosophy, history and the like, it also interacts with fields like theology. But I never ever heard something of marxism BEING a science in all my time at university, and I'm studying History and Anglistics/American Studies and Pedagogics at a university which has also big faculties for Politics, Ethnology, Theology and so on and so on.
Even if Marx worked scientifically, using empirical data and methods the like (besides, at the times Marx lived, the concept of "science" as it's seen today was so to say "under construction", so it would make even this already questionable!!!!), he would have done so within the the humanities, meaning within the boarders of established sciences of this field, using their methology, termini and so on; it surely can't be considered as an independent discipline. Actually, I always read and learned that it's usually simply classified as an ideology, which makes quite much sense to me - you couldn't call for example feminism a science on it's own. Call it phenomenon, call it ideology or theory or as far as some people actually go, "religion", but it just doesn't meet the definitions of a science. I also consulted a friend of mine who's studying politics, and he thinks about it just the same way. I know lecturers who'd "ask" you to leave their courses for claiming this, as it's highly unscholarly to use set definitions and terms like "science" for something like Marxism (even if you'd say he WORKED scientifically), as it just won't meet the criteria to make such a statement true. No matter how much one may love Marxim or be convinced of it being scientifically, it can by NO means gravely be categorized as a science. For example, let's just ASSUME he had collected empirical evidence and the like and the whole procedure, and then would have developed his concept , that what you call "Marxism" - even then, he WOULD have done pretty much the same as done today at every proffesorship, when for example somebody is developing a theory about, let's say, some kind of pattern of behaviour of primates, some nanotechnology stuff or about the role and status of female sovereigns in mediaeval society - and no matter how big the influences and consequences of the things Marx claimes were, such thing's won't count when it's about classifýing something as a science - you couldn't call any of these things a science on it's own, could you? Calling Marxism a SCIENCE is just a false designation.
I don't want to personally attack you with this, please don't get this wrong. I actually think it's a good and interesting thing to discuss topics on a level above clothes and movies here, things which are more challenging, but still this statement can't be considered true - it's not for what Marxism is or is not, but for what a science is and is not. Science just doesn't work for Marxism, theory or ideology an the like would be more fitting, but certainly not science. This topic is dealing with really set and established definitions ("Science" and "Marxism" are quite well defined concepts), so this is not about personal opinions, views and argumentations, so it's actually no use discussing about this. It just can't be classified as a science from an academical or professional point of view.
And no matter how much statistcs, maps or articles you post here, it won't be any evidence to call Marxism a science - it's just the same as claiming that your village is á state or nation on it's own, just because you like it and can come up with loads of evidences that it's a beautiful, nice, clean, well-liked, famous and influential village or arguments about it's economic autonomy, it's interesting history or statistics showing it's enourmous population growth - it's still a village, a part of a state, and can't by no means be labelled as a state, as it won't meet the fundamental criteria of a nowaday's state. It's just the same here.

[Dermezel]

Morberticus

Jaysus dude give it a rest. Marxism isn't rigorous enough to be considered a science, I thought we covered that.

Please provide some reasoning for that statement.

Morberticus

Quote:

This may seem untestable like gravity or natural selection, but it could be disproven if there is a bizarre change of physical laws, though that would have to be the case regularly for it to disprove the law.

I don't understand this sentence.

Karl Popper initially argued that Darwin's theory of natural selection was a tautology and hence untestable. His criticism essentially amounted to saying that the fittest survived by definition (he was in reality attacking a phrase used by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin).

Or as Talk Origins puts it:

Quote:

The simple version of the so-called 'tautology argument' is this:

Natural selection is the survival of the fittest. The fittest are those that survive. Therefore, evolution by natural selection is a tautology (a circular definition).

The real significance of this argument is not the argument itself, but that it was taken seriously by any professional philosophers at all. 'Fitness' to Darwin meant not those that survive, but those that could be expected to survive because of their adaptations and functional efficiency, when compared to others in the population. This is not a tautology, or, if it is, then so is the Newtonian equation F=ma [Sober 1984, chapter 2], which is the basis for a lot of ordinary physical explanation.

The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was not even Darwin's. It was urged on him by Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection, who hated 'natural selection' because he thought it implied that something was doing the selecting. Darwin coined the term 'natural selection' because had made an analogy with 'artificial selection' as done by breeders, an analogy Wallace hadn't made when he developed his version of the theory. The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was originally due to Herbert Spencer some years before the Origin .

However, there is another, more sophisticated version, due mainly to Karl Popper [1976: sect. 37]. According to Popper, any situation where species exist is compatible with Darwinian explanation, because if those species were not adapted, they would not exist. That is, Popper says, we define adaptation as that which is sufficient for existence in a given environment. Therefore, since nothing is ruled out, the theory has no explanatory power, for everything is ruled in.

This is not true, as a number of critics of Popper have observed since (eg, Stamos [1996] [note 1]). Darwinian theory rules out quite a lot. It rules out the existence of inefficient organisms when more efficient organisms are about. It rules out change that is theoretically impossible (according to the laws of genetics, ontogeny, and molecular biology) to achieve in gradual and adaptive steps (see Dawkins [1996]). It rules out new species being established without ancestral species.

All of these hypotheses are more or less testable, and conform to the standards of science. The answer to this version of the argument is the same as to the simplistic version - adaptation is not just defined in terms of what survives. There needs to be a causal story available to make sense of adaptation (which is why mimicry in butterflies was such a focal debate in the teens and twenties). Adaptation is a functional notion, not a logical or semantic a priori definition, despite what Popper thought.

The current understanding of fitness is dispositional. That is to say, fitness is a disposition of a trait to reproduce better than competitors. It is not deterministic. If two twins are identical genetically, and therefore are equally fit, there is no guarantee that they will both survive to have equal numbers of offspring. Fitness is a statistical property. What 'owns' the fitness isn't the organism, but the genes. They will tend to be more often transmitted insofar as what they deliver is better 'engineered' to the needs of the organisms in the environment in which they live. And you can determine that, within limits, by 'reverse engineering' the traits to see how they work [Dennett 1995: chapter 8].

Moreover, fitness exists over and above the properties of the individual organisms themselves. There are three debated ways to construe this. Fitness can be a relation of genes to other genes. Fitness can be a supervenient property - that is, it can be a property of very different physical structures (of ants, aardvarks and artichokes) [Sober 1984]. Or fitness can be seen as an emergent property, a property of systems of a certain complexity and dynamics [Depew and Weber 1995]. Whether fitness is a genetic, organismic or system property is a hot topic in modern philosophy of biology. I think the system interpretation is the way to approach it [Weber and Depew 1996, Depew and Weber 1995].

Recently, there have been attacks on the very notion of adaptive explanation by some evolutionary biologists themselves (eg, Gould and Lewontin [1979]). These fall into two camps - those who think adaptation is not enough to explain diversity of form, and those who think that adaptive explanations require more information than one can obtain from either reverse engineering or the ability to generate plausible scenarios. The reason given for the former is a kind of argument from incredulity - natural selection is not thought to be a sufficient cause, and that macroevolution (evolution at or above the level of species) is a process of a different kind than selection within species. Arguments about parsimony (Ockham's Razor) abound.

Arguments for the second view - that selective explanations need supplementing - rest not on the causal efficacy of selection (which is not denied) but on the problems of historical explanation [Griffiths 1996]. In order to explain why a species exhibits this trait rather than that trait, you need to know what the null hypothesis is (otherwise you can make a selective explanation for both a case and its opposite equally well). Perhaps it has this trait because its ancestors had it and it has been maintained by selection. Perhaps it has it because it would be too disruptive of the entire genome and developmental machinery to remove it. Perhaps it has it for reasons to do with genetic drift, simple accident, or whatever. In order to make a good scientific explanation, says Griffiths, you must know a fair bit about the phylogeny of the species, its environmental distribution, and how the processes that create the trait work at the level of genes, cells and zygotes.

This leads us to the question of what a scientific explanation really is; indeed, it opens up the question of what science is, that it is so different from other intellectual pursuits like backgammon, theology or literary criticism.

The cost of production plays a similar role in Marxism as natural selection does in Darwinism.

[Dermezel]

Morgris

Marxism would be part of a social science. His conflict theory is commonly taught in sociology classes.

Quote:

It has become fashionable to think that Karl Marx was not mainly an economist but instead integrated various disciplines—economics, sociology, political science, history, and so on—into his philosophy. But Mark Blaug, a noted historian of economic thought, points out that Marx wrote “no more than a dozen pages on the concept of social class, the theory of the state, and the materialist conception of history” while he wrote “literally 10,000 pages on economics pure and simple.”1

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Marx.html

In other words it would be inaccurate to argue Marx was mainly a sociologist since the vast majority of his writing dealt with pure, technical economics.

As for the increasingly common and fallacious argument that economics is a "soft science" that does not count:

Quote:

As a biologist practicing laboratory experimental science, I'm aware that some scientists may be inclined to dismiss these historical interpretations as unprovable speculation, because they're not founded on replicated laboratory experiments. The same objection can be raised against any of the historical sciences, including astronomy, evolutionary biology, geology, and paleontology. The objection can of course be raised against the whole field of history, and most of the other social sciences. That's the reason why we're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

But remember that the word "science" isn't derived from the Latin word for "replicated laboratory experiment," but instead from the Latin word "scientia" for "knowledge." In science, we seek knowledge by whatever methodologies are available and appropriate. There are many fields that no one hesitates to consider sciences even though replicated laboratory experiments in those fields would be immoral, illegal, or impossible. We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment with designing and evolving dinosaurs. Nevertheless, we can still gain considerable insight into these historical fields by other means. Then we should surely be able to understand human history, because introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond/diamond_p6.html

In other words if you are arguing that Marx's economic theories cannot be considered science because they are not conducted in a laboratory, then you have to likewise dismiss both astronomy and paleobiology.

[Morberticus]

Dermezel

Morberticus

Jaysus dude give it a rest. Marxism isn't rigorous enough to be considered a science, I thought we covered that.

Please provide some reasoning for that statement.

Economic theories are not testable, as they rely on statistical procedures. Psychology, Biology, Physics, Chemistry etc. all have assumptions tested through strictly controlled and understood procedures.

Quote:

Karl Popper initially argued that Darwin's theory of natural selection was a tautology and hence untestable. His criticism essentially amounted to saying that the fittest survived by definition (he was in reality attacking a phrase used by Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin).

Or as Talk Origins puts it:

<snip>

The cost of production plays a similar role in Marxism as natural selection does in Darwinism.

I still don't understand. Are you claiming gravity and natural selection are untestable?

[Dermezel]

Hristis

Well, Marxism itself is surely no science on it's own - but it's a part of many other disciplines and influences them a lot. For example, you can do Marxism-Criticism in literature, or certain approaches by marxist people in subjects like pedagogics and many more; then of course it plays a big role in sociology, philosophy, history and the like, it also interacts with fields like theology. But I never ever heard something of marxism BEING a science in all my time at university, and I'm studying History and Anglistics/American Studies and Pedagogics at a university which has also big faculties for Politics, Ethnology, Theology and so on and so on.

Part of the reason for this is that Marxism isn't even considered in economics department due to the politicized nature of such departments by right-wing institutions and think tanks. This politicization is noted by credible scientists and field workers:

Quote:

So far, the relationship of science to economics has been a corrupt marriage of self-interested parties. Scientists and mathematicians with models or discoveries compatible with free market ideology are plucked selectively from academia, stationed in well-funded institutes, and then promoted relentlessly with the very same dollars funding Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Thus, the main contributions of science to economics are passed through a neo-libertarian filter, resulting in a skewed and oversimplified set of game theory principles, an at-best metaphorical relationship to systems theory, and a rather contemptuous perspective on human behavior as impulsive and only significant as an emergent, collective phenomenon.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brown08/brown08_index.html

As for there being other areas where Marxism is applied for its political or ideological content, I should note even Darwinism has been used in that way, most notably in the past with respect to social Darwinism, and in the present with respect to Darwinian leftism.

Hristis

Even if Marx worked scientifically, using empirical data and methods the like (besides, at the times Marx lived, the concept of "science" as it's seen today was so to say "under construction", so it would make even this already questionable!!!!), he would have done so within the the humanities, meaning within the boarders of established sciences of this field, using their methology, termini and so on; it surely can't be considered as an independent discipline.

The supposed hierarchy between the "hard" and "soft" sciences has been addressed in a new thread specifically created to address that topic.

The current conclusion seems to be that much of the divide between social sciences, and "hard" sciences, a divide which implies social sciences are "lesser" or aren't "really" sciences seems to be more of a journalistic or pop cultural myth then anything backed by any real rationale or philosophically or pragmatically developed demarcation.

Hristis

Actually, I always read and learned that it's usually simply classified as an ideology, which makes quite much sense to me - you couldn't call for example feminism a science on it's own.

I would say much of what Marx wrote does count as ideology, but his main focus was technical economic analysis and hypothesis testing.

Quote:

It has become fashionable to think that Karl Marx was not mainly an economist but instead integrated various disciplines—economics, sociology, political science, history, and so on—into his philosophy. But Mark Blaug, a noted historian of economic thought, points out that Marx wrote “no more than a dozen pages on the concept of social class, the theory of the state, and the materialist conception of history” while he wrote “literally 10,000 pages on economics pure and simple.”1

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Marx.html

The reason why Marxism can be considered a science (at least the economic theories) but not feminism is because feminism is explicitly a philosophical movement that does not engage in the empirical testing of hypothesis.

Hristis

Call it phenomenon, call it ideology or theory or as far as some people actually go, "religion", but it just doesn't meet the definitions of a science. I also consulted a friend of mine who's studying politics, and he thinks about it just the same way. I know lecturers who'd "ask" you to leave their courses for claiming this, as it's highly unscholarly to use set definitions and terms like "science" for something like Marxism (even if you'd say he WORKED scientifically), as it just won't meet the criteria to make such a statement true.

Those are all pretty fallacious arguments.

Hristis

No matter how much one may love Marxim or be convinced of it being scientifically, it can by NO means gravely be categorized as a science. For example, let's just ASSUME he had collected empirical evidence and the like and the whole procedure, and then would have developed his concept , that what you call "Marxism" - even then, he WOULD have done pretty much the same as done today at every proffesorship, when for example somebody is developing a theory about, let's say, some kind of pattern of behaviour of primates, some nanotechnology stuff or about the role and status of female sovereigns in mediaeval society - and no matter how big the influences and consequences of the things Marx claimes were, such thing's won't count when it's about classifýing something as a science - you couldn't call any of these things a science on it's own, could you? Calling Marxism a SCIENCE is just a false designation.

Studying the behavior of primates is generally accepted as a science and has been since Jane Goodall. As for history, Jared Diamond actually makes a solid case for treating history as a science. In fact roughly half of all sciences can be considered historical sciences.

Hristis

And no matter how much statistcs, maps or articles you post here, it won't be any evidence to call Marxism a science - it's just the same as claiming that your village is á state or nation on it's own, just because you like it and can come up with loads of evidences that it's a beautiful, nice, clean, well-liked, famous and influential village or arguments about it's economic autonomy, it's interesting history or statistics showing it's enourmous population growth - it's still a village, a part of a state, and can't by no means be labelled as a state, as it won't meet the fundamental criteria of a nowaday's state. It's just the same here.

Well would you agree that science is essentially the testing of hypothesis by empirical data? If so, if certain aspects of Marx's economic system, certain hypothesis, can be tested and proven or disproven by empirical data would you consider that scientific?

[Dermezel]

Morberticus

Economic theories are not testable, as they rely on statistical procedures.

Let's rephrase that to "Economic theories are not testable, because they make use of statistical procedures " (statistics are not the only source of data in economics)

That is a very ad hoc argument in the sense that it would eliminate even physics and chemistry. Just consider Avogadro's law. That is basically statistical but it is essential, without it you couldn't generalize in chemistry at all. You couldn't assume that combing X chemical A, with Y chemical B, produces N quantities of chemical C because someone could counter that the elements could not be exactly measured ever (the point of Avagrado's law is that this is irrelevant because the effects will average out) . Avogadro's law allows for generalizations from small sample sizes, and without this assumption, based on a statistical formula, chemistry as we know it could not exist.

Morberticus

Psychology, Biology, Physics, Chemistry etc. all have assumptions tested through strictly controlled and understood procedures.

No. This is entirely untrue for the majority of the sciences.

Quote:

As a biologist practicing laboratory experimental science, I'm aware that some scientists may be inclined to dismiss these historical interpretations as unprovable speculation, because they're not founded on replicated laboratory experiments. The same objection can be raised against any of the historical sciences, including astronomy, evolutionary biology, geology, and paleontology. The objection can of course be raised against the whole field of history, and most of the other social sciences. That's the reason why we're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

But remember that the word "science" isn't derived from the Latin word for "replicated laboratory experiment," but instead from the Latin word "scientia" for "knowledge." In science, we seek knowledge by whatever methodologies are available and appropriate. There are many fields that no one hesitates to consider sciences even though replicated laboratory experiments in those fields would be immoral, illegal, or impossible. We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment with designing and evolving dinosaurs. Nevertheless, we can still gain considerable insight into these historical fields by other means.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond/diamond_p6.html

Basically you are arguing against the validity of all historical sciences and all sciences based on naturalistic observation, and you are doing it just to dismiss Marxism. That is basically like saying you would rather throw away the evidence then accept a conclusion you found "inconvenient".

Morberticus

I still don't understand. Are you claiming gravity and natural selection are untestable?

Well, why don't you try reading the actual article?

[Morberticus]

Dermezel

Morberticus

Economic theories are not testable, as they rely on statistical procedures.

Let's rephrase that to "Economic theories are not testable, because they make use of statistical procedures " (statistics are not the only source of data in economics)

That is a very ad hoc argument in the sense that it would eliminate even physics and chemistry. Just consider Avogadro's law. That is basically statistical but it is essential, without it you couldn't generalize in chemistry at all. You couldn't assume that combing X chemical A, with Y chemical B, produces N quantities of chemical C because someone could counter that the elements could not be exactly measured ever (the point of Avagrado's law is that this is irrelevant because the effects will average out) . Avogadro's law allows for generalizations from small sample sizes, and without this assumption, based on a statistical formula, chemistry as we know it could not exist.

Although your paragraph isn't relevant to what I said (by attempting to fisk me, you missed the point), I'll respond to it in an attempt to make it relevant. Statistical mechanics is a framework capable of making strict predictions about what we observe in thermodynamic and chemical systems. Unlike Marxism, statistics in statistical mechanics (such as Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics) are used to derive principles which can be tested carefully and rigorously (Avogadro's law, for example, emerges from simple Newtoniam mechanics). This means statistical mechanics is accepted because it uses a well verified scientific theory (classical mechanics, and sometimes quantum mechanics), along with some statistics and probability theory, to make claims which have been verified by experiments.

Quote:

Morberticus

Psychology, Biology, Physics, Chemistry etc. all have assumptions tested through strictly controlled and understood procedures.

No. This is entirely untrue for the majority of the sciences.

Quote:

As a biologist practicing laboratory experimental science, I'm aware that some scientists may be inclined to dismiss these historical interpretations as unprovable speculation, because they're not founded on replicated laboratory experiments. The same objection can be raised against any of the historical sciences, including astronomy, evolutionary biology, geology, and paleontology. The objection can of course be raised against the whole field of history, and most of the other social sciences. That's the reason why we're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

But remember that the word "science" isn't derived from the Latin word for "replicated laboratory experiment," but instead from the Latin word "scientia" for "knowledge." In science, we seek knowledge by whatever methodologies are available and appropriate. There are many fields that no one hesitates to consider sciences even though replicated laboratory experiments in those fields would be immoral, illegal, or impossible. We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment with designing and evolving dinosaurs. Nevertheless, we can still gain considerable insight into these historical fields by other means.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond/diamond_p6.html

Basically you are arguing against the validity of all historical sciences and all sciences based on naturalistic observation, and you are doing it just to dismiss Marxism. That is basically like saying you would rather throw away the evidence then accept a conclusion you found "inconvenient".

A laboratory is not always a room with expensive equipment. A paleontologist can test scientific hypotheses related to homologies or population distributions/relationships predicted by evolutionary models. An astronomer can test hypotheses about stellar formation or the large scale structure of our universe. Their laboratories are reliable because inference from their "experiments" stem from strict, uniform natural law. The only difference between them and a traditional lab is paleontologists and astronomers don't get to pick what experiments are carried out.

Marxists don't have such a strictly controlled or understood laboratory. They have to second guess human psychology and sociological behaviour to try and fit the data to their claims. It generates an interesting political philosophy, but little else.

Quote:

Well, why don't you try reading the actual article?

I did. Did you write the article? I am asking you if you are claiming gravity and natural selection are untestable?