JKS:
>>Charles, I have some interlinear comments. My general view, to restate it
it, is that historical materialism and Marxian political economy represent
scientific approaches in the respectable science of science as empirically
guided explanation and prediction of social phenomena. This is not to say
that "Marxism" is a "science." "Marxism" doesn't exist. As a movement,
Marxism is over. As a theory, it represents a collection of diverse and
not-always-compatible ideas , perspectives, and reserach programs.<<
CEJ:
I'm afraid you've lost me on "respectable science of science as empirically guided explanation and prediction of social phenomena". I would say many developments and ideas in Marxist thought pervade the social sciences (and literary studies as well), but I don't know of any social sciences that are effective at explanation or prediction of social phenomena.
CEJ earlier
>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.
JKS That is true of any science. This is a basic Kuhnian point.
CEJ Yes, but Kuhn as far as I've read has never spent much time with social sciences or Marxism. What I meant by my earlier comment was just how much controversy there is in interpreting even what should be basic research in the social sciences I'm aware of--though I also admit I might be a bit jaundiced by 'education' as a social science or 'educational science'.
CEJ earlier:
>And belief in scientific
>determinism was strong in the 19th century. At a popular level it probably
>still is.
JKS:
I suppose you bring this up because of the idea that you find in Marx and Engels that socialism is inevitable, and that this inevitability has been scientifically proven. This ia not an idea that has had a lot of currency in Marxist circles lately, outside the former Communist states; and I would guess not even in them through the mid 1970s on. The first formulation of GA Cohen's reconstruction of historical materialism maintained it, but he has backed off from that in the face of criticism. At any rate, determinism, though certainly valid on the level of classical physics (quantum indeterminism is really irrelevant to the behavior of large scale objects), is not a mark of science, but a consequence of certain scientific theories.
CEJ:
Yes, but obviously at a popular level--yes, the masses--this is not the case. Look at the turns of the discussion of the Empire book, where the same point gets brought up. If it's a determinist pattern, then no interference or action is necessary to push empire through to worldwide Assisian communism or whatever. One reason why existentialism appealed to many far as a clear-cut alternative to Marxism was the freedom it gave to free will. And in France, millions turned out on the death of the man who tried to reconcile the two--Sartre.
CEJ earlier:
>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).
JKS: Well, maybe. I have defended "selectionist" models of historical materialism (see my "Functional Explanation and Metphysical Individualism," Phil. of Science 1995), and Alan Carling has given them a fuller articulation. However, historically speaking, this is an instance of convergence rather than influence, since Marx and Engels formulated historical materialism before 1859, the year The Origin of Species was published. And the models are strictly LaMarrckian rather than Darwinian, because social institutions "inherit" acquired characteristics, while it's the fundamental dogma (so called in biology, this is not an individious characterization) of Darwinism thatw ith biological organism they are not inherited.
CEJ:
Noticed I said Marxism, not Marx. Even Marx and Engels hardly stopped writing and developing their ideas after that, and more importantly Marx and Engels read Spencer (as did Carnegie, perhaps the US's most influential social darwinist), and they are all three near perfect contemporaries. Engels is well noted for incorporating positivism and evolution into his theories, something not lost on Soviet thinkers. Going over the US side, for many in the capitalist classes, Spencer was the solution to the Marx-Engles problem.
JKS: All this is irrelevant to determininism, since there is nothing deterministic about any form of Darwinism.
CEJ: In what sense of determinism could you possibly mean? I suggest you review social darwinism and what people used it for. And to many 19th century people, determinism was a mark of science since events could be assigned to 'laws' or 'explanations'. The whole idea that history marches toward some more advanced state seems deterministic. Progress is still a very popular concept with many.
CEJ
>
>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).
JKS I think Althusserian "science" is one of the alternative senses of "science" you mentioned. It has nothing much to do with ordinary norms of scientific inquiry of the sort that would be expected in work published in a scientific journal. Likewise with Althusser's "rigor," which has nothing to do with what scientists think of as "rigor," which means something like careful argument whereby the premises are tightly connected with the conclusions,and the experimental tests are preciselt controled.
CEJ: Yes, but I was giving it as an example of what senses might be invoked in calling Marx a "science". Perhaps to many in the European traditions, metaphysics and ontology have never been cast out of science proper. You see something analogous in the US where everyone is a 'professional' or 'manager'.
Also, it's clear that even what you might call a science is not limited to disciplines with experimental methods. It seems quite obvious to me that many big steps forward are either the results in someone noticing 'happy accidents' (since most scientists are just technicians running algorithmic procedures called experiments) or the accomplishments of highly intuitive thinkers whose thought processes are not well understood but match up with what Peirce called 'abduction'. For example, Einstein.
CEJ earlier:
>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
JKS: Well, that is certainly true. I mean, he is as much of scientist as they, if not more so, at least in his strictly analytical work, notably Capital.
CEJ: I wouldn't say more so.
CEJ earlier:
>Scientific determinism in conflict with an inbuilt normative drive in a
>social scientific sense is hardly unique to Marxism.
JKS:
But determinism is quite irrelevant to norms, unless you fall back on hard determinism, whereby determinism is deemed incompatible with moral responsibility.
CEJ:
Yes, that's the point. People do this all the time.
JKS:
Perhaps you are thinking of the old Leninist and Stalinist justifications of terror based on the idea that these are necessary to the realization of an inevitable communism. There is little likelihood that Marxists will ever again be in a position to impose terror on a population, so in that respect the debate is merely of historical interest. Moreover, it's probably true, at least I hope it is, that most Marxist reject these ideas, so in that sense, too the debare is a dead letter. In another sense, there is a still-living debate about whether development can be carried out with primitive accumulation and terror to enforceit. But this debate is now mainly carried out in terms of whether the development of capitalism must be repressive, as you note.
CEJ:
I'm not sure. I didn't think what I wrote was so evocative. Again, what I was trying to do was motivate why some would call Marxism a science other than the apparatchik parody you gave earlier.
CEJ earlier:
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.
JKS: Who are you thinking of?
CEJ:
Is it anyone you would then go and read anyway?Nobody they would take seriously in Marxist circles anyway. I didn't take them seriously then enough to note their names. I suggest you do a little research yourself and find out how free market theology has been used to justify just about anything in the real world.
CEJ:
>In short, we can have economic determinism/economism with or without
>Marxism.
>
JKS:
Of course. But "economism" isn't the same thing as determinsim. One can hold that the economy is explanatorily primary without thinking that it determines everything.
CEJ:
I meant determined in the sense of assigned a pre-existing cause. Did n't you yourself make use of this before?
CEJ earlier
>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.
JKS: Yes. I have actually written a paper that makes this point: "The Paradox of Ideology," Canad. J. Phil. 1993.
CEJ: Well I said it in my senior's thesis of 1983, but I concede you may have arrived at your position without my help.
CEJ earlier:
Marxism, however, starts with its values out front rather
>than as a hidden or unconscious agenda.
>
JKS: Neoclassical economics may have them out front as well.
CEJ: Never said some didn't.
CEJ earlier:
>Nor is it the Marxists alone who want to use the word 'science' so as to
>escape critical inquiry, analysis and deconstruction.
JKS: Though of course, this is an abuse of any serious notion of science, the cehntral virtue of which is that it is supposed to subjectedthe claims we are considering to critical inquiry and analysis, if not "deconstruction," whatever that is.
CEJ:
Deconstruction is French for radical analysis. French thinkers are no more irrational than British or American ones.
CEJ earlier:
>Even those in science
>do this. Look at the BSE and nvCJD outbreak in the UK, . . . 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).
JKS:
Right, but this is bad science, rather than science being ideological.
CEJ:
Yes, but my point was even scientists do it, and I would say the problem goes way beyond bad science. Using inadequate science to tell people their food is safe so no one has to worry about the costs sounds ...well...ideological to me.
CEJ:
>
>My point in all this is that science can't explain everything
JKS:
Well, what do you mean by this? In one sense of "explain," to explain a phenomenon means to come up with a scientific account of why it occurs. A scientific account needn't take a specific form, such a determinist one. It might involve a probabslistic account or a narrative of a certain sort. But to qualify as scientific it has to be empirically testible, precisely formulated, consistent with whatelse is known, and several other things.
CEJ:
It was a sophomoric throwaway line. I meant: Even the sort of procedures and ways of life you are describing here can't explain everything, but people who get assigned the title 'scientist' often don't like to admit this.
CEJ earlier:
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.
JKS: Well, what's your alternative to scientific inquiry?
CEJ:
Most people do not live by scientific inquiry. All I meant was that it is but one part of living in this world. And again, I was trying to motivate why some might think 'Marxism' as much a science as 'free market economics' or 'animal nutrition'.