Is Marxism a science?

The headline left no room for doubt: “Sex doesn’t sell any more, activism does. And don’t the big brands know it.”¹ The article published by a friend mine at Facebook brought me the reflection: “hey, look at Capitalism reinventing itself again,” leading me to recall Marx’s readings of youth and his deterministic certainty that capitalism was in inexorable crisis, fatally leading to its bankruptcy and overthrow in the face of the inexorable evolution of history into socialism and finally communism². This theory is considered science by Marxists, who see in history Marx’ preachers of action of determinism, that is, it is determined that history will follow the course outlined by Marx, finally arriving to Communism, in a second half of the 19th century version of Laplace's determinism.

Indeed, Marx is a product of his own time as all men, as argued by Hegel, by the way one of the main influences of Marx; and what time was it? Marx lived all his adulthood in the Victorian Age, that is, during Queen Victory’s government in UK; really, Marx was 19 years old in 1837, when Victory took the throne, and he died in 1883, 18 years before Victory and 31 years before the end of Victorian Age, which many authors defend finished in the World War 1. Born into the full industrial revolution Victorian period was an era of reformers and theorists, a time when it was believed that very soon science would give us all the answers and solve every problem; so, not only Marx was influenced by it, but also Comte and his Positivism which, despite some strong disagreements with Marxism, is a kind of brother of it, both believing in a “scientific” dictatorship as solution for all the problems of the world.

One of the problems in analyzing whether Marxism (and positivism) is scientific is the definition of science. Indeed, the word has several meanings. The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, for example, says that science is the “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation,” but it also says that science is “a subject that is formally studied in a college, university, etc.,” and “an activity that is done by using methods that are known to produce particular results”, that is, with such scope it is possible call science not only chemistry and physics, but also Astrology and Marxism. The problem there is what the physicist Thomas Kuhn – who also was philosopher of science – classifies as “incommensurability”, that is, two groups can use the same word with totally different meanings. The case is that, although Marxism could be called science when we use the meaning of “knowledge”, following ipsis litteris its Latin origin (scientia, which means knowledge), it can’t be called science using the same meaning that we use when we are referring to Chemistry or Physics, for example; in this case, science means a system to acquire knowledge using scientific method, as well as the organized body of knowledge acquired in this way. Scientific method is understood as the rules of procedure which produces scientific knowledge, that is, to acquire verifiable empirical evidence based on systematic and controlled observation, usually resulting from field experiments or surveys and analyzing them using logic³, more than that, however, Marxism strikes the Popperian demarcation of what is or isn’t science, accepted by academia worldwide, with the exception of Marxists. The demarcation by Popper is called falsifiability or refutability, and is based on the necessity that, for a knowledge to be considered scientific, there is at least one feasible experiment or observation that, providing a certain result, implies the falsity of the assertion, that is, if the knowledge is false this feasible experiment will show that it’s false. For instance, the assertion “all swans are white” could be proved false by the observation of a black swan⁴; in other words, to be scientific a research method should be based in acquisition of empirical observable data and measurable proofs, which then must be submitted to tests of hypotheses aiming at proving the opposite of this theory, hypothesis or statement⁴. Marxism have nothing of this and, therefore, it can’t be confused with science.

A black swan proves that not all swans are white

Apart from this, Popper showed the translation error which gave rise to the allegation that Marxism was a science: the German word ‘wissenshaft’ which Marx used and means ‘body of knowledge’ was translated as ‘science’, but the right word to ‘science’ is ‘naturwissenshaft’ which means ‘science of nature’. According Popper neither the predictive structure of its premises nor the exclusive use of the physicist in counterpart with the non-physical, makes Marxism a science⁵.

Marxists, of course, don’t like that classification of Marxism as non-science, clearly because the respect that science receives in our society, since it is based on proven studies to add more information to our world, as well as the constant technological progress it provides; in other words, science is respected because it works! To get away from it, Marxists, unlike other academics, base their philosophy of science on Thomas Kuhn, not on Popper, because Kuhn⁶ talks about scientific revolutions. According to him, scientific process isn’t purely cumulative, there are moments in which a scientific paradigm exhausts its explanatory capacity and is surpassed (often at its base). According to Kuhn, this movement of advance, exhaustion, refoundation marks the times and, in general, constitutes a progress. The problem that Marxists don’t take into account is that Kuhn doesn’t clarify what is or isn’t science, since the problem of demarcation (that is, the definition of science and pseudoscience) isn’t his philosophical scope. Kuhn defends that science advance in revolutions, and that this revolutions create a new paradigm, and it lashes out at what he calls “normal science” i.e. the old paradigm, occurring what he calls incommensurability, that is, the incapacity of the “old science” comprehends the new paradigm, but even if all that is right, it doesn’t unfeasible popperian demarcation, that is, Popper and Kuhn aren’t incompatible. So, when we perceive that a Marxist hypothesis or theory fails – as the case that Marxism didn’t predict the periodic reinventions of capitalism or that the world is not marching inexorably towards socialism – Marxists don’t consider Marxism refuted in relation to this theory or hypothesis; actually they just adapt the explanation and put other explanations that Marx never said, or they use the artifice of “you misunderstood the context” to explain refutations as if they were non-refutations, that is, Marxism isn’t open to refutation as any scientific theory, in fact, Marxism does not seek to draw conclusions from facts, but rather seeks facts that support its theory;. Well, we saw that definition of pseudoscience is a theory, hypothesis or body of knowledge that isn’t open to refutation, therefore is impossible don’t classify Marxism (and Positivism) either as pseudoscience or, at least, as non-science, classifying it as philosophy.

1 – Holder, A. Sex doesn’t sell any more, activism does. And don’t the big brands know it. The Guardian, 3 fev 2017. Disponível em [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/03/activism-sells-brands-social-conscience-advertising], acesso em 3 ago 2017.

2 – Para saber mais sobre o pensamento de Marx sem ter que ler os quatro tomos da obra, sugiro [MARX, K. Capital (An Abridged Edition) (Oxford World Classics). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.]. Na obra estão resumidos os conceitos econômicos da teoria marxista, tais como mais valia, capital constante e capital variável, uma análise sobre o salário; ou sobre a acumulação primitiva. Resumindo, sobre todos os aspectos do modo de produção capitalista e, é claro, a teoria sobre a crise do capital.

3 – SINGH, S. Big Bang. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 2006.

4 – POPPER, K. A lógica da pesquisa científica. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2014. Any differences between Popper's terms and mine should be credited to the fact that I used the book in Portuguese.

5 – POPPER, K. Conjecturas e refutações. São Paulo: Almedina: 2003. Any differences between Popper's terms and mine should be credited to the fact that I used the book in Portuguese.

6 - KUHN, T. A Estrutura das Revoluções Cientificas. Lisboa: Guerra & Paz, 2009. Any differences between Kuhn's terms and mine should be credited to the fact that I used the book in Portuguese.