I agree, of course it's stupid to treat Marx's method as one should treat general relativity even if we ignore the fact that the modern scientific method is different to that which existed when Marx was busy constructing it because Marx is not dealing simply with things that empirical science can represent unlike physics (which explains why Popper's charge of unfalsifiability is a sham; he treats it as a bourgeois 'social' science which it obviously is not going to satisfy). However, this is not what is meant by 'scientific socialism'. I believe that the term came from Proudhon independently of Marxism and was also used by Engels to describe Marxism. Are there subtleties which I'm missing? Also please note that I don't just want this to be about my own personal misunderstandings because even though it saves a lot of time with regards to clearing them up, it's not what I was intending to do with the thread. This should be about other peoples' learning too.
Left Buzzwords
Tyler Anderson
Anthony Miller
Scientific socialism can be summed up with this:
In other words, when Marx uses the words “scientific socialism”, he is talking about the fact that his analysis is based on REAL premises that can be empirically verified, which is different from utopian socialism, which is based on imaginary premises. Note that while scientific socialism is BASED on premises that can be empirically verified, it itself is not entirely empirically verifiable. That would be the difference between scientific socialism and science as we now conceive of it.
John Collins
The muddy style can't point the savings.