Justin
I read you to the end and some subsequent exchanges but am backing up here to start my discussion.
>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.
About that last claim, do you mean textbook fundamentals or disagreements in the social sciences? There is so much disagreement that most social sciences just keep accumulating would-be paradigms and contradictory (even self-contradictory) theories. Most 'empirical' research in the social sciences can't be made sense of unless you share much of the same beliefs as the people who did the research. Those college 101 textbooks just keep getting thicker (though psychology books may have thinned somewhat since now most have abandoned Skinnerist behaviorism).And if you want an intelligent discussion in the social sciences, just go back to Durkheim or Weber.
The idea that Marxism is a science could be based on a number of things, since the term 'science' has meant at different times different things to different people. When Zola promoted naturalist fiction he thought he was doing 'science'. (Interestingly, in the 20th century Chomsky remarked something to the effect that fiction gave better psychological and sociological insights than social science did). And belief in scientific determinism was strong in the 19th century. At a popular level it probably still is.
Marxism can be made to fit within a determinist framework. You might say Marxism is an attempt to philosophize and rehumanize Social Darwinism (the scientific status of the latter many never doubted, right up to the point of using it to justify genocide).
Later Althusser, perhaps the most influential Marxist since Marx, made much use of the term 'science', but his ambitious conceptualization transcended both empirical science and applied science in technology (proponents of which by the way, like Marxism, make strong normative claims). Althusser saw the later Marx as being 'scientific' in the structuralist sense of social science, so Marx was as much a scientist as Durkheim, Weber, Saussure or Levi-Strauss (and you have to remember that, unlike France, in the US social science has always tended toward more positivism and mathematical analysis than grand theory, with or without the normativeness).
Scientific determinism in conflict with an inbuilt normative drive in a social scientific sense is hardly unique to Marxism. Since the 1980s market utopists have been using similar logic because they say they can discern an 'over-determined' pattern of stages from pre-industrial to fully developed and prosperous. Such thinking has been used, for example, to argue against birth control in developing countries since the historical pattern has been a population boom and even overpopulation preceding 'naturally' lowered birth rates, diffuse education, full development and prosperity (they don't seem to discuss mass emigration in the context of the 19th century though). In short, we can have economic determinism/economism with or without Marxism.
I would say that modern Marxism's difficulty in attaining science status is really the same difficulty that all fields of inquiry and theorizing about the ideological and social realms have. It is further limited in the sense that it has been so deterministic while at the same time normative, but again, that is not unique to Marxism. American mangagement science comes readily to mind. Marxism, however, starts with its values out front rather than as a hidden or unconscious agenda.
Nor is it the Marxists alone who want to use the word 'science' so as to escape critical inquiry, analysis and deconstruction. Even those in science do this. Look at the BSE and nvCJD outbreak in the UK, Europe and now Japan. First, one thing leading to it would appear to be 'scientifically approved' feeds with animal proteins. Second, science predicted that the disease couldn't cross species, but the sheep form has been empirically crossed to cattle and vice versa and now many scientists accept the idea that humans can get it from consuming animals--even after many scientists insisted it couldn't happen (because the economic and political fallout was more important than any real science they had backing up their claims). Third, scientists want to isolate an etiol but can't find a virus or bacteria that fits (though one scientist has argued for primitive bacteria that can survive extreme conditions and can cross the blood-brain barrier). The majority of scientists say they think the 'prion' is the cause, but the gap between the model and any understandable reality is huge. The prion also may well model prominent epiphenomena rather than a cause. Current beliefs about BSE and nvCJD disease have altered in the past decade, but they still seem far more determined by political and social exigencies than any strong, explanatory empirical science.
My point in all this is that science can't explain everything and, when it attempts to, it often comes up with determinist patterns and metaphors that are as much fiction and superficially explanatory as anything a Marxist or free market utopist ever uttered.
Charles Jannuzi Fukui University, Japan