Golden Dysprosium
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For example if we advanced computer technology to the point where social scientists could make predictions with 99% accuracy (higher then that of some physical/astronomical theories) and they proposed various theories or laws based on this, it would still be considered unscientific because these are pre-defined as "soft sciences".
No, it would. The trick with social sciences is that it isn't as "solid" as, say, medicine. Things like social trends and public attitudes change, while things like lactic acid production in anaerobic respiration generally stay the same (barring some grand evolution, obviously); it's merely how we look at it that changes.
But some facets of medicine are not understood, take the disease Fibromanglia.
Likewise some social events can have so much social force/inertia behind it that it can be very certain. Take the centralization of capital. That has generally occurred, world wide, in every society, almost without exception.
Golden Dysprosium
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Or if not unscientific then less scientific then say Grand Unified Theories in physics, even though these physical theories do not have a level of predictive certainty reaching anywhere near 99%.
Way to set an arbitrary, arguably unrealistic standard.
neutral
At any rate, the economic ideas you've credited to Marx are not his, nor are they original, let alone his own. The political/philosophical aspects are (approproately) acreditted to him, which is how Marxism/communism/socialism is defined. It is not a "priori categoization", but rather a universally recognized definition, based on the qualities something exhibits. The only real point Marx makes in economics is that it should be monitored, which is really just common sense.
Why is the standard arbitrary and unrealistic? You stated pretty blankly that "hard" sciences, are always more certain then "soft" sciences, now you are backtracking.
As for Marx's economic theories not being his own, again I urge you to read
Capital. The law of centralization is his own. The organic composition model (the tendency for constant to push out variable capital) is his own. And his updated labor theory of value has substantial differences from those of Ricardo. He also firmly established the process of how the relative value of wages tends towards decline, as well as how the idea of "compensation" is discredited.
As for his ideas, a lot of those you attribute to Marx, especially those of revolution are actually those of Lenin. And socialist thought existed long before Marx.
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The English word socialism (1839) derives from the French socialisme (1832), the mainstream introduction of which usage is attributed, in France, to Pierre Leroux,[12] and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud; and in Britain to Robert Owen in 1827, father of the cooperative movement.[13][14] Although socialist models and ideas espousing common ownership have existed since antiquity with the classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle[15], the modern concept of socialism evolved in response to the development of industrial capitalism. Early socialism was seen as an extension of classical liberalism by extending liberty and rights to the industrial economic aspect of life, so that these values were compatible with the then-emerging industrial society.
The first advocates of socialism favoured social levelling in order to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based upon individual talent. Count Henri de Saint-Simon is regarded as the first individual to coin the term socialism.[9] Simon was fascinated by the enormous potential of science and technology and advocated a socialist society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism and would be based upon equal opportunities.[16] He advocated the creation of a society in which each person was ranked according to his or her capacities and rewarded according to his or her work.[9]
This was accompanied by a desire to implement a rationally-organised economy based on planning and geared towards large-scale scientific and material progress,[9] and thus embodied a desire for a more directed or planned economy. Other early socialist thinkers, such as Thomas Hodgkin and Charles Hall, based their ideas on David Ricardo's economic theories. They reasoned that the equilibrium value of commodities approximated to prices charged by the producer when those commodities were in elastic supply, and that these producer prices corresponded to the embodied labor — the cost of the labor (essentially the wages paid) that was required to produce the commodities. The Ricardian socialists viewed profit, interest and rent as deductions from this exchange-value.[17]
West European social critics, including Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, Charles Hall and Saint-Simon, were the first modern socialists who criticised the excessive poverty and inequality of the Industrial Revolution. They advocated reform, with some such as Robert Owen advocating the transformation of society to small communities without private property.
Linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents' and opponents' cultural attitude towards religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, the word communism was too culturally and aurally close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.[18]
Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, at the time when the Communist Manifesto was published, "socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not." The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered "respectable" socialists, while working-class movements that "proclaimed the necessity of total social change" denoted themselves communists. This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany.[19]
Karl Marx
The Marxist conception of socialism is that of a specific historical phase that will displace capitalism and be a precursor to communism. The major characteristics of socialism (particularly as conceived by Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune of 1871), are that the proletariat will control the means of production through a workers' state erected by the workers in their interests. Economic activity is still organised through the use of incentive systems and social classes would still exist but to a lesser and diminishing extent than under capitalism.[20]
Even the concept of bourgeoisie and proletariat is not unique to Marx. The proletariat originally referred to dispossessed member of City-States, like those of ancient Rome. And the term bourgeoisie became largely popularized by the French Revolution.
And Dialectical Materialism was more a product of Engels then Marx.
Marx's major contribution, even from a socialist perspective, lay in his cohesive, well researched economic analysis and hypothesis:
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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
Even by measurements of sheer quantity of work Marx was by far more an economist then a political activist.
A lot of the idea that Marxism is primarily concerned with economics actually comes from Lenin in his
State and Revolution where the revolutionary preceded to cut economic science off from the Marxist movement because he believed Marx had failed to predict Imperialism.
Over time however I believe Marx has been vindicated and Lenin proven incorrect. Not only were his "three revolutions" that he used as the sole basis of his generalizations a small sample size, but he didn't even attempt a single quantitative analysis on any of them. Likewise, he himself was forced to abandon much of his theory with the New Economic Policy. Also the Soviet Union failed to achieve socialism (a point on which Lenin was ambiguous).
And much of the path towards socialism has been unpredicted by Lenin. For example, the JCP gains ground in Japan even though it uses democratic means (a point Lenin argued was impossible) and China is slowly becoming a proletariat, as opposed to peasant worker's state nation by its own economic development (Lenin argued this could only occur by linking up with an advanced industrialized proletariat. )
Also Cuba seems to be doing well too, even though it is isolated, much to the chagrin of Lenin, and modern studies of modernization with respect to political development seem to question much of Lenin's original assumptions. For example, democracy has on average become stronger in advanced nations, not weaker. Furthermore, many advanced nations have transformed into welfare states without need for a violent revolution (Lenin argued this was impossible due to workers being too caught up in the work-spend cycle to learn the intricacies of Marxist theory, and that this would be necessary to attain class consciousness. )
This is why it is important to distinguish between Marx's economic science, which was thoroughly researched, quantified and empirically tested, and his politics which were often presented more loosely and informally. This is even more important with respect to distinguishing between Marxism and Leninism.
