CB: He's arguing with Marx and Marxism , and on this thread with me. Hello. Am I invisible or something ?
JM: My impression was that I was defending Engels against your simplifications. At least that is how I started my contribution to this thread, the apprehensions of shag to the otherwise, that I was attacking her belief system. To put it simply, there is no definition of "theory" that I can think of by which one can call the philosophical orientation of "materialism" a theory. Materialism is not a theory by either the loose definition of Miles, or the definition of Michael, or any other that I can think of.
And this observation about "materialism" was the extent of my first intervention on this this thread.
> Marx directly addresses the issue of natural scientific like theory in
> social science in the following:
>
> Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the
> economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less
> rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction
> should always be made between the material transformation of the
> economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the
> precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious,
> aesthetic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men
> become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
JM: Charles there is absolutely nothing in this quote that addresses anything I have been discussing in relation to "the uses of theory" in this thread. Marx simply makes an assertion that certain transformative aspects of society can be "determined with the precision of natural science." I would assert that this is mostly a rhetorical flourish, but even if it is not it doesn't show anything. There are many things that can be determined with the precision of natural science that are non-theoretical. Some are at foundation definitional (such as the statement, "I am writing this email on the First day of June") and some are a matter of measurement (the distance between where I sit and the East River is 1.2 miles) and some are mere repeated observations (such as the observation that by 1 am in the morning most people in my apartment building will be in bed.)
And Charles as a measure of your own confusion you should note that in the above quote Marx is talking about things that can be measured and contrasting them with things that can't be measured. Thus he says "the material transformation of the economic conditions of production" can be determined but not the ideological changes where the field of the class struggle takes place. The implication is that in these ideological fields things cannot be determined with "the precision of natural science" that things are imprecise, to say the least, and, of course, indeterminate. Further, Marx in this case is not talking about predictions in the future but of economic conditions that can be measured once they have taken place. This does not make the measurements any less "scientific" it only adds another limit to what Marx is writing about in this case. As far as prediction is concerned one can probably conclude from the fact of "the material transformation of the economic conditions of production" in the past (and their measurablity) that there will most likely be such material transformations in the future and that when they occur we will be able to measure or determine them "with the precision of natural science."
This is what the passage says Charles, and whether the passage is true or false in its assertions, it has no impact on anything I have written above about "the uses of theory."
Jerry
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> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/