>Engels remarks someplace, I think in the Anti-Duhring, that one can't
>explain every element of daily life.
Why not? Because Engels said you can't?
>I doubt that any one abstracted
>thread in a whole society can _ever_ be explained.
Why?
>Anyone can make up a
>just-so story for any one cultural phenomenon,
What do just-so stories have to do with science, especially social science?
> but such stories are
>worthless without some sort of control -- what they call overlap in
>cryptanalysis (two or more messages encrypted with the same additive
>key).
What does this mean? To the extent it means anything, you seem to be saying that facts only have meaning within particular theories. Really?
>There could be scores of equally persuasive explanations, all
>unsupported except by the rhetoric of the explicator, of any given
>fad/fashion at any given time.
Really? Then why are you a Marxist? Did you throw a dart at some theory dartboard somewhere, then decide that was your story and you were sticking to it? Or does Marxism help us understand a pre-existing, superior reality? Everything you say above sounds like it's the former for you, rather than the latter.