Is Marxism a pseudo-science?

While arguing with someone today, I told them that we know leftism is true because it's a science, every other political position is just reactionary, people reacting to problems of capitalism instead of changing the system. They retorted something like this:


How would you respond to this?

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thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/12/27/the-marxist-theory-of-economic-crises-in-capitalism-part-one/
m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-k8X_3e0mM
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muh eternal capitalism

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You didn't provide any argument.

Marx's contribution to the history of thought is more than one part.
There's a philosophical, epistemological, historical and political contribution of Marx. IMO it's completely foolish to dismiss marxist thought as a pseudo-science especially when things like economics qualify themselves as a science. As to Marxism's claim to scientific validity, I think there are a lot of signs today that would tend to validate Marx's theories.

No-one really claims this outside of the eternal optimist. A transition into a communist society is inevitable though.
We are in late stage capitalism, have been for a while. It's eating itself up.
Not by our definitions.
Can someone clarify this?


fucking thread

There's nothing to clarify. It's a completely inane statement

Marxism is dogma(no u)

wheeze

I'd tell them to actually read Marx because that is all shit that people that have never read him say, like the mudpie argument.

Tbh I don’t consider Marxism to be a science because no form of economics or political/historical/sociological theory is a science.

are you retarded?

I hope this thread doesn't get anchored because I want to give some thoughts on this. Maybe in a few hours.

He has a point. The counterpoint is cockshott.

I am going to need some sauce for this

iirc Esteban Malto cited in this is the original source (but it's in Spanish)
thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/12/27/the-marxist-theory-of-economic-crises-in-capitalism-part-one/

No shit, but reactionary the way we use it is just a slander term for right wingers. It's like centrists using SJW when describing right wingers, both terms are specific only to one political group.
Marx is literally just economics being used to justify communism. He can't be a pseudo scientist without economics themselves being false.

Marxism isn't a science in the sense we use the word today. Anyone who claims it is is an idiot.

As far as I'm concerned, Marxism is a "science" in two senses:
- In the sense used by the German idealist tradition. Marxism strives to be a totalizing system in some sense. Through its own proper methodology, it offers an explanation of social existence of mankind.
- In distinction with "Utopian" views of socialism, which propose grand schemes for socialist societies without inspecting the material forces that will bring us forward.

One, neoclassical economics is definitely a pseudoscience, and that's what liberal world views are based on. So if nothing else, they are definitly wrong.
Two, Marxism has proven to be a useful analytic tool to look at society. It's based on empirically confirmed notions of the law of value. It is certainly not pseudo-anything, and it can contain in it a science, even if the entire philosophy is not about making empirical claims.

This is correct.

Gover Furr address this issue of 'history as a pseudoscience' in the first 10 minutes of this discord lecture.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=9-k8X_3e0mM

wat

Hello, Zig Forums

"Leftism" doesn't exist. Only Right-wingers (Liberals) use it, as it muddles-up the issue and permits IdPol.

There is only Socialism (which Liberals don't want to talk about). But Socialism is not a science. Neither is Communism, nor Anarchism. Now Marxism could be called scientific (literally, Scientific Socialism), but it is not science per se (though, it obviously mandates scientific approach to problems).

That's not what the word "reactionary" means. Stop misusing it.

Reaction actual Socialists are talking about is Thermidorian Reaction, i.e. the tendency of Centrists to betray Left (in the name of some high moral standards or some other bullshit) and the subsequent slide-down into counter-revolution (Right-wing "White Terror") when the only good thing that happens is that Centrist scum gets slaughtered as well.

The implied idea is that Marxism makes one or two predictions and those predictions did not come true. Neither is true. There were many predictions made, and overwhelming majority proved true. The fact that some predictions (that relied on incomplete information) did not come true with 100% perfect precision cannot be used as an argument against Marxism.


If you want to read actual debate on the topic (not this half-baked nonsense - from both sides), I suggest Maurice Cornforth's "Reply to Popper" (which was printed 50 years ago and still remains valid, as the only new argument against Marxism - post-industrial society - self-refuted itself already).

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Furr apparently uses Discord. I expect nothing less from the man.

It's just an update and reinterpretation of Adam Smith and Ricardo. There is ample scientific evidence that Marxist economics is correct. Tell him not to say this shit if he hasn't even read Capital– the vast majority of "MARX WAS RIGHT" articles online are extremely superficial and misleading, because they are written by liberals.

Considering that we just went through an entire century of communist revolutions, there is ample evidence that communist revolution IS always around the corner, at least in specific places ant times. Considering the MASSIVE amounts of money that capitalists dump into anti-communist propaganda everywhere, they are clearly afraid that communism is just around the corner and implicitly acknowledge it as true.

This is just wordgames, "reactionary" means a specific thing, not just reacting to things.

Dialectics is borne out in modern physics, materialism is as well. Marxist history is just applying our knowledge of the micro to the macro, asserting that the laws of physics apply to all of society. In Marxist analysis and practice, this is understood to be a high-level abstraction, meaning doing away with absolutes, dogma, and certainties. Instead, it's a general framework for:
a. figuring out what's really going on
b. figuring out what kinds of political actions will get a desired result in the current situation
Generally speaking, liberal and conservative history is wildly inaccurate. It is literally a bunch of lies. As well, the general mode of bourgeois politics is constant promises of improvements that are never made real. In comparison, Marxists uncover the secret history, the people's history, and explain things in real terms rather than ideals. And when Marxists succeed, they get RESULTS IMMEDIATELY.

If they strictly define science as "exact science", they're basically correct. But as long as they accept that scientific methods can be used in history, sociology, humanities, … there's no coherent way to claim that Marxism couldn't also be a science following the same standards.
Also there's these papers (and Maurice Cornforth's book-length refutation of Karl Popper).