(See Bill Gorton's paper "Popper's Debt to Marx" at www.polisci.umn.edu/information/theory/kiosk/spring2001/Popper.pdf).
I would add, that some of the Analytic Marxists have attempted to deal with this issue on Popper's own terms. Dan Little in his book *The Scientific Marx* argued that historical materialism was best thought of not as an articulated scientific theory as such but more as a research program in Lakatos' sense. And I believe that William Shaw in his *Marx's Theory of History* took a somewhat similar view.
Jim F.
On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 18:45:07 +0000 James Heartfield
<Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> A friend of mine studied Popper in his philosophy degree and, fed up
> at
> not understanding him, got his number from international enquiries
> and
> rung him up to ask about it. (It was a while ago, he died, I think,
> a
> few years ago)
>
> 'Do they still read my book in England' said the little reedy voice
> on
> the other end, incredulous.
>
> Anyway, sad to say, Popper is not to be taken too seriously. His
> arguments are pretty standard cold war fare designed to give an a
> priori
> rejection of the Marxism that Popper held in his youth (see the
> autobio
> Unending Quest).
>
> The 'is it falsifiable?' test is pretty trivial, but as it happens,
> Marx's own theory, as he intended it, meets the test. He never held
> that
> he necessarily had *the* answer, nor that his investigations could
> not
> be improved upon or overthrown. Most definitely he did not think
> that he
> had the answer for all time, since his account of historical laws
> sees
> them as changing over time, so resisting all final description.
>
> The 'is it falsifiable' test is weak because it takes the special
> claim
> of scientific objectivity and reduces it to one of formal logic. At
> best
> it only works as a secondary expression of scientific rationality.
> The
> underlying implication is that scientific reasoning draws its truth
> not
> from its own character, but from the object it describes. The reason
>
> that something is falsifiable is because its truth content is
> outside of
> itself.
>
> As to Gordon's persistence with the over-philosophical
> interpretation of
> Heisenberg, you have to say with Einstein that H. had merely hit
> upon
> some barriers in the present, not absolute ones. The history of
> science
> is littered with such apparently insurmountable barriers. Comte
> thought
> that you could never measure the chemical content of the sun, but
> that
> was because spectography had not yet been developed.
>
> In message <20011231182344.31083.qmail at web20004.mail.yahoo.com>,
> Cian
> O'Connor <cian_oconnor at yahoo.co.uk> writes
> > --- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: >
> >Cian says:
> >>
> >> >Because the statements of Marx could not be
> >> >falsifiable, Marxism is not scientific.
> >>
> >> You have yet to prove your hypothesis that "the
> >> statements of Marx
> >> couldn't be falsifiable."
> >
> >I suggest that you read "The Poverty of Historicism".
> >I am not Popper, and it's been a few years since I've
> >read him, so my paraphrasing of his theories would be
> >hopelessly inadequate. I don't have my copy to hand,
> >or I'd quote from it.
> >
> >> BTW, is Popper's theory falsifiable?
> >
> >Popper's theory doesn't claim to be scientific. Being
> >scientific is not a mark of legitimacy. However
> >unscientific theories cannot take advantage of the
> >scientific toolset of predictive induction etc.
> >
> >It's worth bearing in mind that in Marx's day, being
> >scientific was a used as a mark of academic
> >respectability and modernity. More a buzz word, than a
> >description of philosophical rigour.
> >
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> --
> James Heartfield
> Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at
> GBP19.99, plus
> GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close,
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> E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org
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