Is there a way to demonstrate how Marxism, materialist dialectics, and scientific socialism are - in fact - scientific?
I know Popper attacked Marxism/DiaMat on the basis that it is unfalsifiable. I think this is wrong but I would like a more comprehensible explanation. I know pic related was very straightforward about Marxism being scientific and not just a bunch of mystical woohoo. But again, I need something more in-depth to demonstrate this. For instance, what makes a specific method "scientific" as opposed to pseudo-scientific? What makes DiaMat superior to New Age bullshit?
It's not an it was never meant to, it's a misunderstanding of the contemporary usage of the word 'science'.
Landon Brown
So what is "scientific socialism" then? Certainly we aren't utopians.
Ryan Baker
Knowledge-based Socialism would be more accurate. The point wasn't that Marx had discovered a mathematical formula for socialism, it was that his theory was based upon material conditions and history as opposed to the earlier utopian socialists who imagined something they liked irrespective of material conditions, to summarize it in a vulgar manner.
Leo Stewart
Unfalsifiable is not really a demonstration of the unscientific status of diaMat. Geometry is founded on unprovable axioms, it does not mean the consequences of them are wrong.
At the end of the day to build a logical argument on society you need to make some fundamental assumptions that may very well become such a far reaching statement that it does devolve into an unfalsifiable statement. And this "fallacy" has to do mainly with the self-referencing logic a thinker has to do on the ideology he sees through. The risk is to fall into paradoxical situations (the classical self referencing paradox: this statement is false).
The first pages are good if you want to understand what they meant by "Utopian" socialism.
Samuel Gonzalez
Literally the only thing that is different between Marxism and modern science is that Marxism deals with such a high level of abstraction that it can't be directly and conclusively tested and confirmed through small, isolated scientific experiments. Instead, Marxism depends on historical data and testing through actual action.
Other than the scientific method, Marxism is completely in line with all other aspects of modern science, and is in fact much more in line with modern science than idealistic outlooks that view things as pure forms in and of themselves, or outlooks that believe that history moves "linearly," that is with no conflict or swings from one pole to the other, or outlooks that view history in an idealistic stasis such that it is impossible for anything to come after capitalism (end of history).
It is perfectly possible to do science without empirical testing, and in fact many of the most celebrated and important scientific breakthroughs are achieved solely in the realm of theory and abstraction. The concept of zero, negative numbers, imaginary numbers, and many other mathematical concepts that are the basis of modern science were arrived at through theory long before we realized that they could be used to represent physical (that is non-economic or non-idealistic) things. Marxism (via Hegel turned on his head) is simply the reflecting of the modern scientific (materialist) understanding of these concepts back onto society and history. Denial of Marxism is similar to the denial of negative numbers, a persistent error of European philosophers all the way to the 1700s: the reason Europeans failed to incorporate negative numbers was because they made deep idealistic philosophical errors, while Eastern philosophies long accepted the concept of opposites.
Countless valid scientific theories (such as general and special relativity) stood untested for decades. And many highly important modern sciences depend heavily, not on direct experimentation, but on historical data. Much of the theory of evolution depends on historical data and pure observation. So does ecology and climate science.
"Dialectics" in a general sense are just a form of logic that proposes some relation between opposites. There are many different kinds of dialectic, it would not be correct or very meaningful to say that dialectics itself is science or scientific. Rather, the dialectic can be applied in scientific and nonscientific ways, and is a component of science. EG a scientific understanding of the dialectic is that there are dialectical relations between things at all levels, that things themselves have dialectical processes ongoing inside them, and that the dialectic expresses itself through motion. This kind of dialectics can be used to describe everything from electromagnetic phenomenon to class warfare. In this sense, dialectics can be compared to some of its simpler components, such as the concept of negatives or negation. Is a negative number "scientific"? It just depends on how you apply such a concept. An unscientific or incomplete application of dialectics might take the form of concepts in traditional eastern philosophy for instance. Someone could say that there is a dialectic between idealistic concepts, "good and bad," or someone could say that the dialectic is part of a cycle that is never-ending and unchanging, such as reincarnation, assuming that human society will forever remain in one stage.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/#HegeDialMethLogi It would mean that if you started to dialectically analyse the same concepts Hegel did, you would inevitable reach the same conclusions that he did. Of course it's a highly debated claim.
Choose to learn Marxism from the main theories and personalities of the tradition instead of fringe youtube autists
Cooper Hall
Stop this shit, the only time it's appropriate to listen to such a video is if you're actively in the chatroom or on a long car ride. Nobody is going to learn from this.
Nolan Walker
Don't read these they are useless
Carson Roberts
...
Luke Bennett
Scientific Socialism is a declaration of intent. I.e. it is a position that supports only scientifically sound Socialist ideas.
Dialectical Materialism (why are you using meme-tier terms?) is scientific in the same way, as scientific method is scientific. I.e. it is not science as such, but it facilitates scientific discourse. For example, by providing defintion of truth, or reminding people that all phenomena are processes (i.e. have time vector) and aren't static objects.
Finally, there is socio-economic and historical analysis of Marxism. General tl;dr on it was already given, more is provided in the book below.
Well it's more that he claims DiaMat is a "nonsense philosophy" without explaining why. I mean, how the fuck can you be a leftist social scientist at all without DiaMat?
Samuel Johnson
What the hell is althussers antihumanism? What is his anti-positivism?
Does that mean estrangement/alienation is not good maxism?
Nicholas Harris
He denies the very concept of alienation, because there is no "true self" as you are merely the product of the ISAs. FFS read some.
Isaiah Carter
Marxism is true because it's a science, marxism is a science because it based on truth!
He is undeniably using dictom associated with science and uses categories that fit neatly with the scientific method and the process of producing research papers. This assumption that history, society and economy function according to a categorization made up of clearly defined concepts that function mechanically is the fundamental flaw of marxism. This shows itself when marxists criticize a term or conception as being arbitrary, as not being subject to a mathematical definition, as if the reality of something is determined by whether or not it fits into marxist paradigm, as if marxism is reality itself.
Adrian Myers
Popper wasn't even consistent in his application of scientificity when it came to Marx.
Elijah Green
I didn't know there was still effort posting of this quality on Holla Forums, excellent comment. Basically the point Mao made in On Practice but more succinct and with better comparisons to other scientific phenomenon.
Yeah. So alienation then currently exists because we are the 'products of ISAs' and that sibjectivity can currently be alienated. It seems pretty obvious alienation still exists b/c capitalism first creates the subject then alienates it
Noah Adams
Marxism grew out of the enlightenment at its most ambitious. in a book about the philosophy of science, Marxism would occupy a chapter of its own. An experiment that has been going on for over 150 years generating mountains and mountains of data. The 'failure' of the USSR does not disprove Marxism, in fact it provides it with new tools for a comprehensive critique of the present. Unlike the modern positivist ideal of science, Marxism is explicitly goal oriented and does not pretend to be 'neutral' or 'objective'. Under a capitalist system, 'science' is subordinate to production, you notice this when it comes to scientific papers, they have to be cranked out without regard for content.
Cooper Martin
bump
Brandon Adams
DiaMat is pseudoscience, literally all metaphysical speculation regardless of what Lenin tells you.
Noah Carter
That is why mathematics is not a science, it is stronger than science. That is because mathematics can be studied independently of all phenomena.
Jaxson Lewis
scientific marxism is the cancer killing anti-capitalist struggle
there, i said it
Jonathan Brown
Depending on what you mean to say, I may agree with you. Insofar as "scientific" marxism could be equally named scientistic, I remain faithful to this idea. That we abandon aleatory materialism is, however, entirely untenable should we really envision the potential dissolution of the logic of capital.
It is precisely that any idea requires its metaphysical niceties. If one was to discount the philosophical acerbities, all the little foul tastes that it points out in your mouth as cavities or gum disease, one would arrive at the "end of capital" and it would be represented in the exact same ideological fashion: we would call a mouth full of fetid stumps a beautiful, shining smile.
That pointless example aside, Dialectical Materialism cannot have such a crisis because it doesn't make itself pretender to totality, it is by nature transient. It is an intensely philosophical process, at the very root of the tradition of challenging what is and why it must be that way. We lose a whole lot more than you'd think in abandoning dialectical materialism.
