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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Many social theories have been called scientific, but no one has insisted more than Marx on the scientific nature of his system of thought. It is the purpose of this article to examine the ambitious claim of Marxism to be the only real science of society. Dialectical materialism may be omitted from consideration since it concerns not science but philosophy (or even metaphysics), and in any case it is the Marxist social theory, or historical materialism, for which the claim of science is most insistently made.
There is no need to give here the details of Marx's historical materialism. The main point to be kept in mind is Marx's assumption, lying behind the entire body of his theory, that history and society move according to a pattern of knowable laws, the so-called “laws of motion” of society; and that Marx claims to have done nothing more than to have laid bare these laws. If Marx is right he obviously ranks as the greatest social scientist of all time. If he is not right he is a misguided and fanatical genius who has led man's thought up a long blind alley.
A preliminary word on the application of scientific methods to the study of society may not be out of place. The purposes of study, whether in the natural or social sciences, are the same: to explain how, to accomplish a practical result, or to predict. These three criteria may also be used to test a scientific theory. There are of course certain special difficulties in the social sciences, difficulties arising (to select from many reasons) because of the nature of the data, or because inference may so easily be confused with fact, or because merely studying the behaviour of people and publishing the results may affect the very behaviour being studied.
1 Cf. Wootton, B., Testament for Social Science (London, 1950), 17.Google Scholar
2 In Marx, Karl, Selected Works (London, 1942), I, 363–4.Google Scholar
3 A closer parallel in feudalism, to the capitalist and the proletariat of the modern world, might be the lord and the serf. Yet it was a new class, the bourgeoisie, and neither the lord nor the serf, which won through to dominance. On this analogy it should be a new class (say, the managers and the bureaucrats?) which will inherit from the capitalist.
4 Perhaps this statement is too idealistic. Planck, Max in A Scientific Biography and Other Papers, trans. Gaynor, F. (London, 1951)Google Scholar, says that his experience taught him that new scientific truth only triumphs because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with the new truth.
5 Selected Works, I, 380.Google Scholar
6 Domar, Evsey D., “The Varga Controversy,” American Economic Review, 03, 1950, 132–51.Google Scholar
7 Zirkle, Conway, ed., Death of Science in Russia (Philadelphia, 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huxley, Julian, “Soviet Genetics: The Real Issue,” Nature, 06 18, 1949, 935–42Google Scholar; June 25, 1949, 974–82.
8 The successive rewriting of Stalin's life is shown in Wolfe, B., Three Who Made a Revolution (New York, 1948).Google Scholar The logic of this rewriting of history is depicted in its ghastly extreme in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
9 Curtis, J. S. and Inkeles, A., “Marxism in the U.S.S.R.: The Recent Revival,” Political Science Quarterly, 09, 1946 Google Scholar; The Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1949.
10 Selected Essays of Karl Marx, trans, by Stenning, H. T. (New York, 1896), 39.Google Scholar A modern Marxist concedes that, with reference to the 1848 prediction: “for once the eagerness of Marx and Engels got in the way of their dialectic”! Jackson, T. A., Dialectics: The Logic of Marxism and Its Critics (London, 1934), 434.Google Scholar
11 Marx, and Engels, , Selected Correspondence (London, 1934), 51.Google Scholar
12 Cited in Mehring, F., Karl Marx: The Stpry of His Life (London, 1936), 254.Google Scholar
13 Selected Correspondence, 116.
14 Ibid., 117–18.
15 Ibid., 124–5. When the American Civil War broke out, Marx was confident of a Northern victory, but Engels was doubtful. Ibid., 134, 136, 138–40.
16 Ibid., 144.
17 Ibid., 95, 280, 288. Mehring, , Karl Marx, 95, 390–1.Google Scholar
18 Selected Correspondence, 290.
19 ibid., 102, 115, 213.
20 Naturally, if one predicts crises and revolutions constantly, one is almost bound to be right sometimes. Marxists often defend Marx (as Marx defended Hegel) by saying that although his conclusions may occasionally have been wrong his method of analysis is what is most valuable. I dissent from that view. My reading of Marx convinces me that he had a considerable gift for nosing out the ramifications of economic interest, and it was this which usually made his thrusts and predictions come true—when they did come true. But they often did not in fact follow from his analysis. Marx's attempt to explain the economy on the basis of the labour theory of value is a choice example of this.
21 Marx's dialectical laws could perhaps be regarded as statistical regularities or probabilities (as scientific laws are regarded nowadays), and in that case allowance could be made even for the deviations owing to “free will.” The only trouble is that a statistical generalization is not Marxism.