1. religion It may be that statements about the existence of God are not verifiable and thus meaningless. But it seems to me the wrong strategy to prohibit talk about the existence of God. Best to engage religious people in dialogue so as to reveal the contradictions and absurdities entailed by the belief in the existence of god. That is, we may need more talk about god in order to weaken religion, not no talk as mandated by positivist canons.
2. universals laws as inapplicable to the historical world
I agree with Horkheimer's criticism here but as Grossmann reminded us, Richard Jones was able to undermine the universality of Ricardian rent theory by intenstive study of India, Persia and China. Jones knew nothing of the Hegelian dialectic. Grossmann called attention to the detailed discussion of Richard Jones in Theories of Surplus Value. Of course Jones' research would have to be updated, and the whole idea of the Asiatic mode of production, reconsidered in light of new evidence and debate among, e.g., R S Sharma, Harbans Mukhia, Irfan Habib, Lawrence Krader, Brendan O Leary, etc.
3. unobservables.
I like Bryant's formulation:
" The exclusive concern with the oobservable in the positivist conception of science has its origin in the rejection of metaphysics. The positivists were right to have rejected the timeless ideal character of the forms and essences which are supposed to underlie phenomena, it is argued [by the Frankfurt School], but it does not follow that, because *these* concealed forms are chimera, all structures and proceses which underlie observable phenomena are chimera. Ahistoricity and concealment should not be confused, and the validity of the positivists' objection to the first is no guarantee of their objection to the second. On the contrary, the critical theorists conclude, one must always remain alive to the possibility that there are historically limited structures and processes which generate phenomena but whose existence can only be inferred. The extraction of surplus value in the capitalist mode of production, for example, is analysable in these terms." p, 121
yours, rakesh