The problem with the conception of "science" in old fashioned orthodox Marxism is that it has nothing to do with science as practiced by scientists. It was more in the spirit of orthodox religion of the sort that a priori fits the phenomena to a set of sacred texts authoritatively interpreted. I find the term "orthodox" Marxism quite revealing. Scientific orthodoxies are of another sort, best described by Kuhn's theory of paradigms. They are not defined by authoritative interpretations of texts. They are rather frameworks provided by successful theories and exemplars that structure reserach by offering problems to be solved.
I do not think historical materialism is "a science." Neither do I think that "a science" is best understood as defined by a distinctive subjective matter, contrary to Greg. To see this, reflect on the difference between physics and chemistry, which is more a matter of a level of abstraction than a difference in subject matter, Indeed, there ia discipline, physical chemistry, that works on the borderline between the two approaches. Sciences, as understood now in the broadly Galilean tradition, are bodies of theories and methods of enquiry that are empirically constrained attempts to explain or predict the phenomena they consider, generally using quantifiable approaches that are susceptible to testing by observation. In that sense, one may have a scientific theory of society.
Historical materialism is, or is part of, such a theory. There is not one thing that historical materialism, and, unlike even Darwinian biology, there is no agreement on a standard formulation. The most precisely stated version is G.A. Cohen's, but many find it unacceptably technologically determinist, although the later version back off a lot from the technological determinism of the statement in Karl Marx's Theory of History. Other less technological versions, like Richard Miller's in Analyzing Marx, are less clearly expressed. However, even here there is little consensus on the object of the theory. Cohen and Miller think the point of the theory is the large scale direction of social change, basically proving a theory of the possibility of revolution. Others pick up other threads in Marx, for example, explaining the dynamics of a society, or a capitalist society through the base-superstructure modelor some analogue. Milton Fisk's account in his underread and underrated The State and Justice, is the best account I know along those lines. But these disagreements and differences show that we are not dealing with "a science," but at best with scientific theories within a framework of something like sociology.
Jacoby, in the quotes excerpted by Michael P, attacks "scientism." Surely there is such a thing, but "scientism," if it means anything, means the inappropriate use of pseudo-scientific vocabulary as a sort of ritual incantation rather than the attempt to explain and predict social phenomena. Richard Feynman decries all social science as "cargo cult science"--like the cargo cults of the Polynesian island, where the islanders would build wicker "airfields" to bring back the Americans with their cornucopia, he thinks that social scientists deploy mathematical apparatus and generate "observations" without bringing real knowledge. There is a lot of that, no doubt, especially in economics, but the "cargo cult" of Marxist scientism is of a different sort. It is a way of appropriating the authority of natural science without even the apparatus or the attempt to explain. Third International Marxism from the early 30s on was pure ideology, mere politics. Second International Marxism and the Third International from 1918 through the late 20s had a lot of genuine scientific theorizing: Luxemburg on imperialism, Hilferding on finance capital, Kautsky on Christianity, Lenin on developing societies, and the like. In the Fourth International and related movements, there were serious attempts by Trotsky, Schachtman, and others to explain the nature of Stalinism. None of this was "scientistic."
One problem with conceiving of Marxism as a "science," particularly in situations where Marxist movements attained real power, was the confusion of political ends and aims with scientific knowledge. Science was conceived (scientistically) as a body of unanswerable, definitive, closed knowledge; this was identified with the political aims of those in power, and used to silence criticism. You could differ about politics, but science, hell, you'd be a total idiot to diasgree about science. In a smaller way this has been a pattern that has occurred in a lot of left groups, where some theory has become the identifying feature of the group, thus state capitalism as a theory of the USSR with the Cliffites. Of course real science is rife with disagreements, except about textbook fundamentals, but there are few of these in social science.
We are now in a stage where Marxists have no chance of attaining power in the foreseeable future, nor even any chance of leading mass movements that are self-identified as Marxist. It is probably a good time to reclaim historical materialism as scientific--the theories are all that is left. Marxism, as a self-styled movement for political change, is over. Science is largely what has a hope of carrying on. We should grasp this opportunity. But in doing so, one must be careful to avoid the mistakes of taking science itself to be scientistic and or politicizing science in the sense described. One must also be sensitive to the nonscientific dimensions of radical thought--utopian aspirations, political choices, cultural criticism and ethics. These must be informed by ideas derived from scientific theorizing--for example, there is no point in advocating ideals that our best theories tell us are unattainable. Vice versa: scientific research shoiuld be guided by ethical choices, political decisions, and directed to realizing feasible utopias.
jks
>
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.