Had an argument where someone tried to tell me historical materialism is “necessarily true” and therefore not scientific or useful. Only response I can think of is that dialectical materialism is a philosophical framework, and isn’t subject to the same rules of falsification as a hypothesis. It feels somehow unsatisfying.
Have any of you encountered this argument before? What do you say to it?
Sure, but Marxism is supposed to be scientific, right? Don’t our theories need to be falsifiable as a rule?
Is the proposition that every scientific hypothesis or system needs to be falsifiable itself falsifiable?
That’s what popper claims separates science from non-scientific disciplines.
Saying “there is a god” isn’t scientific because you can’t disprove it.
Saying, “everyone in the world is wearing a white shirt” is, because you could observe that being false. It puts the focus on real life, testable phenomena.