I’ve always heard my comrades insist that Marxism-Leninism is scientific. I understand how dialectical materialism is scientific, and I understand that Marxism-Leninism is rooted in dialectical materialism. For a while, that satisfied me, but lately I’ve been reading material about how Marxists might present falsifiable hypotheses which made me realize I don’t understand how this works at all.
How do I, a Marxist, go about studying society scientifically in a way that dovetails nicely with dialectical materialism? Do I have to do experiments? What does that look like? How will I know if I’m wrong? Examples would help.
In short, MLs do not seek socialism because they are utopians or because socialism would be more moral; they seek socialism because it will resolve the contradictions of capitalism, according to the scientific world outlook of Dialectical Materialism.
There are lots of scientists who openly and actively applied dialectical materialism to natural sciences. E.g. Peter Medawar. (Great writer, by the way, and he has lots of short articles available online. Some on Marxists.org IIRC.)
Marxism-Leninism is scientific because it applies the scientific method to human relations (we call this application Historical Materialism).
There is more to it than this but this summary is a start. We could have a good debate over this summary and the ‘scientific’ aspect of Marxism-Leninism, so you have asked an excellent question.
You may find it helpful to read Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (short pamphlet) and/ or Anti-Dühring (the full book, longer, but it is quite funny).
Experiments not necessary. Take the hypothesis, ‘lead ingestion is especially harmful to children under 5’. We do not need to give lead to children to test this hypothesis. Children will unfortunately eat lead. Adults, too, will be exposed to lead. If we collect data on patients over time, we can review the data and notice patterns.
Note, I am not a medical doctor and will gladly be corrected on the following example by someone who knows more than me on this issue.
[Edit: see Ayulin’s critique of this example in the comment, below.]
E.g. children with X symptoms tend to have Y milligrammes of lead per millilitre of blood, but adults who come to the emergency room with the same symptoms usually have Z (greater than Y) milligrammes of lead per millilitre of blood. We can guess that lead is more harmful to children because lower exposure is connected to greater harm than in adults. Then we can record new data and see if it supports that hypothesis. Every time new data supports the hypothesis, we can be more confident that it is correct (but only if it is falsifiable).
This notion of ‘confidence factors’ is from Popper’s hypothetico-deductive methodology, btw (Objective Knowledge IIRC). The point is, ‘experiments’ are not really necessary even for Popper. We must record, observe, and analyse data, though. Experiments give us data, but we can get data from elsewhere.
Historical Materialists (Marxist-Leninists) can analyse e.g. economic data. In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Lenin analyses data relating to the size and wealth of companies to highlight a pattern that capitalism tends towards monopoly (fewer and fewer, but bigger and bigger companies). He identifies the average number of employers of companies in one decade, then observes the same for later decades. His thesis is based on what that data shows. We can be confident that Lenin was correct because new data collected today still shows a tendency towards monopoly.
To see Marx do Historical Materialism, have a look at ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire’. For a modern example, you could read something by Zac Cope, Bertell Ollman, Michael Parenti, or David Harvey.
If you want a challenge, there’s always Capital,Vol I. And if you’re interested but not ready to tackle the whole book, you could try one of the chapters on primitive accumulation (maybe ‘Bloody Legislation’ (short chapter) or the chapter on the working day (long-enough-to-be-a-short-book chapter)).
Try not to feel overwhelmed with all these sources. If this is all or mostly new to you, begin with the shorter Engels text on Scientific Socialism, above.
Feel free to ask more questions or for clarification.
Does this help?
I don’t fully agree with your example, since an alternate and totally plausible hypothesis would be that in reality they both ingested the same amount of lead and thus have the same symptoms but the child body is just slower at getting rid of lead. This would make it appear as if adults are more tolerant to lead even though both patients were actually exposed to the same amount. It still illustrates the point that not all knowledge as to come from experiments and data collection in the real world can also lead to insights, but I think what my point shows is that experiments still can’t be (easily) replaced. With an in-vitro experiment you could test whether child neurons react differently to lead compared to adult neurons and with that information make an educated guess under the (questionable) assumption that in vitro translates to in vivo. This often holds true but not always. But it is definitely better than being left with the uncertainty that mere data collection results in.
Great point!
I suppose that to help us decide which of the two hypotheses is correct, we could test for lead content in bone and organ samples? And compare x-rays? But…
You have also made me realise something else: I may have set up a false dichotomy within the idea of ‘experiment’. In my example above I imply that an experiment is something (a set of conditions?) that e.g. a scientist sets up. But if we test for lead in blood or other tissue, or compare x-rays, is that not an experiment? Okay, the scientist need not give people lead in the first place, but once patients turn up having ingested lead, what follows may be described as an experiment, no?
You’re still right, I think, to correct me and say that experiments are difficult / impossible to replace. (Well, we could avoid experiments, but we would not get far.)
I think there’s something else to pull out of your observation (continuing with the example above): Marxist-Leninists must still consider different hypotheses for the tendency towards monopoly or consider whether capitalism always tends towards monopoly; and they must ‘experiment’ to see which hypothesis is more accurate / more useful for predictions.
A good example would be Kautsky, arguing that socialists should break up monopolies and use state power to control smaller companies. Lenin rejected this idea, observing that we started with lots of smaller companies and history brought us to imperialism. Those remade smaller companies would again form (secret) cartels and trusts to get an advantage and we would soon be back at imperialism.
Another example is Kwame Nkrumah’s Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. In this book, Nkrumah updates Lenin’s thesis to take account of new data – i.e. showing that imperialists dodged the full contradictions of imperialism by exporting those contradictions to the (ex-)colonies.
Taking this further, and in light of some other comments in this thread, I now also see more clearly that Marxist-Leninists can ‘experiment’ with human relations. For instance today we have data showing that if a communist party plans parts of its economy, we can avoid some of the worst aspects of monopoly and provide e.g. housing, education, and healthcare to all. (For clarity, this does not mean Kautsky was right – it suggests instead that the state can control the monopolies rather than breaking then up.)
Warning: I’m talking about lead in this example as if we were the first people to consider the problem, thinking, how do we know if lead is harmful, and how much is harmful. But we do know lead is harmful! Be very careful with lead!
Be cautious especially with wood and metal paint if it was painted before the 1960s to be safe. Lead is incredibly harmful, especially to children under 6 (I’m told they will keep eating lead paint chips because it is sweet – Romans used it in wine). And except for the body’s ability to get rid of some lead upon ingestion (not much, adults more than children), adults and children absorb lead in bones and it is to my knowledge impossible to remove unless you go straight to the emergency room before it has been absorbed (can take a few days, I think) and take a prescription that can prevent that absorption.
Once the bones are ‘full’, any more lead goes to the organs and eventually the brain, again where it cannot really be removed. At this point, the subject would suffer from organ failure and brain damage. If you are decorating an old house, you can buy lead testing strips. Dip in vinegar, then rub on suspicious paint. If it goes ‘pink’ (read the instructions), do not sand or scrape! Not 100% accurate, but better than nothing.
For anyone in construction, read up on lead poisoning. Plumbers and roofers may come into contact with a lot of lead, for example. Wear gloves and an FFP3 mask and do not eat or drink until you have washed your hands well. (There is a campaign about occupational risks of lead, but it’s not widely known. Probably because preventing the occupational risks would cut into profits.)
I think the important part about experiments is that you control the input variables and measure the output. This is of course the ideal experiment and in the real world you can never account for all input variables. But if the scientist knows how much lead has been ingested this is a controlled variable and therefore even if the scientist did not “feed” the subjects lead as long as they know how much has been ingested it should be considered an experiment.
Of course social experiments are also possible in that sense. Consider the impact of the pandemic for example. We have now obtained data on the way such disruptions influence different economic and political structures. Since we can analyze the virus and the different economic and political structures we can consider the input variables to be (largely) controlled. Thus we need not engineer a virus and spread it to acquire valuable data that can help us when we encounter future catastrophes of a similar kind. Of course this should not imply that the impact of Covid was positive, but rather that we can transform situations that arise into experiments that we can learn from through measurement.
Regarding your first paragraph: while it’s certainly not just based on abstract morality, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that MLs don’t seek socialism for ethical reasons
Definitely. Thanks!
This is a Good question. You often hear about Scientific Socialism and the Dialectical Method. Basically socialism is the answer to the historical development that we’ve seen throughout society. Once you understand DialMat, you see the way that things develop and grow and decay. Einstein himself wrote in his “Why Socialism” that politics, like astronomy, like biology, seek to find universal rules within their field of study and apply them to better understand how these fields develop and why they do. Scientists, political or otherwise, also seek to find trends and different stratas within their field and see what grows and what decays. We as socialists view the changes and repudiate the decay, the stagnant and dying, and we uphold the progressive, the rising, the correct next development. That’s why we repudiate Capitalism, Imperialist conquest, outdated social concepts of hierarchy, etc. When socialism is not scientific, it doesn’t look into the trends and changes or if it does, it doesn’t care about responding. A type of Socialism that Marx and Engels shat upon was Feudal Socialism, a version where upon defeating the capitalist class, the proletariat and peasants all fall into peasantry rather than Proletarianization, which is necessary for socialist transition. The peasants, using hand labor and simple looms and handcrafts cannot compete with production that works in concert with each other with socialization of labor, a positive thing that capitalism calls forth as opposed to the Feudal style of production. Because we need to remember that capitalism was once Revolutionary back in its day, there are aspects which are better than the era preceding it. So Marx and Engels said that essentially you can’t go backwards with Historical Materialism, otherwise your supposed socialism is actually reactionary and doomed to fail. Scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism is scientific because of the way that it analyzes the world and fights for the Revolutionary ideal of the international proletariat. The scientific part makes sense because think about this: China wants to make sure every hospital has enough equipment, to do this, questions will need to be asked, people will describe what they need, where it’s going, etc. The science that is occurring is in the process of data collection and deciding what to do with that data. Scientific Socialism is a part of Planning Economies so you don’t have to worry about the vagaries of private capital and Free Markets If China or Vietnam or DPRK was Reactionary and didn’t support scientific achievement in their countries and didn’t move past basic production, none of them would be where they are today, or even exist as nations. That’s the basics of Scientific Socialism, more can be explained by Engels in “Socialism Utopian and Scientific” and Stalin’s “Anarchism or Socialism”
Good explanation!
That’s very helpful, but I was hoping you’d address my question about “falsifiable hypotheses.” For context, I was reading an article debunking Karl Popper’s claim that Marxism peddles in unfalsifiable, unscientific claims.
Def read Engels socialism: Utopian and Scientific as a start. But just to see how Marxist economics adheres to scientific method of falsifiability, while bourgeois / marginal utility theory economics doesn’t check out this 2-vid series by Paul Cockshott.
It focuses on how one of the pillars of capitalist economics, the supply and demand curve, is completely unfalsifiable and unproven, while the labor theory of value is both falsifiable and proven.
Useful video, Muad’Dibber.
Your comment reminds me that Popper implies (argues? – it’s been a while since I read him and don’t have an exact quote / reference) that ‘social science’ is not ‘real’ science because it is generally unfalsifiable. He may be right about a lot of bourgeois social science. The mistake is conflating Marxist with bourgeois social science.
Ya that’s true. There is a lot in social sciences that is falsifiable, and sciences like physics also have a lot of stochastic systems with high degrees of uncertainty and variability. Popper really let his ideology get in the way of his better ideas.
Have you read anything by Alan Sokal? He wrote a book called Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. Tbh I never finished it because I thought the premise was a bit unethical at the time. He and Jean Bricmont wrote and published loads of articles in prestigious postmodernist journals. But they made up the science and the maths, suggesting that science is regularly abuse e.g. by people citing Lacan and Derrida favourably. I might dig it out and have another look.
Pity about Popper. Oh well.
Did you see this thread on falsifiability and Marxism?
Edit: the actual link might help: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/305196
Yeah that was my post lol, maybe I should take another look at that
Haha. Damn, I even checked the name of the OP (i.e. you) for that thread before I replied to you here, but I had ‘Ayulin’ in my head as I had just replied to slither comment above.
You’re asking good questions, though, so keep it up!
It just kinda depends. You don’t need to know the difference between α and β values or how to read a χ2 table to be a good activist. What you mainly need to know is how to discern fact from propaganda (which is why most MLs love to say “read theory”). And through dialectical materialism, you should know how to not only integrate fact into your actions, but also integrate the results of those actions into fact, thus adapting your informal ‘model’ of reality. Dialectics is rather similar to the scientific method, but with less formal controlled experimentation. Dialectical practice is mainly concerned with the causes and effects of actions in the real world, and adjusting our practice until results and theory merge together.
Party leaders, on the other hand, would need some semblance of understanding of management, basic methods of interpreting studies, how to allocate resources to studies, and just generally know enough to talk to scientists and statisticians in order to make informed decisions. But the nitty-gritty of hypothesis testing and data analysis should be left to the experts. Most fields of study take years to get into for a reason. Someone in charge of organizing a lot of people can’t get lost in the weeds, though. They need data summaries to get an idea of how real life systems, production methods, and power structures work, and then be able to review what changes their budgets or policy changes made to the state of those structures.
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism by Lenin
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels
An example of Lenin doing analysis on census data
An example of Lenin’s communications with the Central Statistical Board
ON PRACTICE by Mao.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS OF THE LAND INVESTIGATION CAMPAIGN You can get a feel for the differences between the ways Lenin and Mao communicate about data here. Lenin has a head for statistical sciences and manages in a rather traditional bureaucratic manner. Mao delegates and encourages committees to have some degree of autonomy and discretion so long as they follow the main directives. Note that the land investigation campaign simultaneously re-organized the land and reported on the results of their efforts, rather than simply performing a population survey. Practice of the method is integrated deeply with the study.
To the falsifiability of scientific socialism: it is not that scientific socialism is or isn’t falsifiable; consider if the scientific method itself is falsifiable. It is not. Branches of science are not thought of as falsifiable. What is falsifiable are theories and assertions through experimentation. Which is what practice is. The method and the philosophy of science is dictated by philosophy. All science is based on philosophy as a tool to justify its existence. Just the same with diamat. It is not worth the time to get hung up on this matter too much unless you really are wanting to put a lot of work into the philosophy of science, which is cool too. Read Thomas Kuhn if you want to learn more about how science develops.
What the diamat and historical materialism offer is a new branch of science and epistemology with which to experiment.
As with all science, it is open developments and change through experimentation and experience.
This is how I understand it, please correct me, comrades, if I have misunderstood or misinterpreted something.
What the diamat and historical materialism offer is a new branch of science and epistemology with which to experiment.
A technicality here: both Hegelian dialectics and Marxist dialectics are a fair bit older than Popper’s Critical Rationalism. He actually formulated his theory of Falsifiability as a counter to Marxism after learning about Diamat firsthand from Marxists.
Going on a tangent because I got carried away researching this comment (it’s not you, it’s me. I agree with you, just being a nerd)…
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/bppmpw/comment/enwrbco/
Methods, like Popper’s, that came from the positivists have some utility. Their probabilistic research methods are quite useful in ‘hard science’ experimentation (though this seems to just translate to “sciences that make sense to critical rationalists”). But they’re not as useful when generalized to theory and complex systems, and scientists break from critical rationalism all the time to argue this or that theory is more likely to be true. Popper famously disagreed with General Relativity and has since been shown to be incorrect in his skepticism, using his own methods of empricism.
Some marxists think falsifiability is so pushed upon science students because of its propaganda value. A great example of how falsifiability works in favor of the bourgeoise is in the psychological concept of ‘controlling for socioeconomic factors’ which is science-speak for “we don’t want to address class in this experiment”.
That’s not to say that there aren’t social scientists out there studying the intersectionality between class, race, sex, and other psychological factors. But oftentimes, controlling for SES can be used as a smokescreen to individualize mental disorders and their treatment methods. Many social scientists don’t want to get entangled in the idea of taking on an entire class structure to treat illness (either out of ignorance or politics). Therefore, we don’t get treatment methods which involve funneling public funds to community outreach or mutual aid or actually allievating stressors and alienation caused by capitalism.
The result is clear in that most people use psychologists as “legal drug dealers” as that is about as far as you can go with psychology limited by Popperian science. In this case, dialectics gets the goods.
Given that positivism descends from Kant, we can see similarities here to Marxist criticisms of ideological Kantianism:
The state of affairs in Germany at the end of the last century is fully reflected in Kant’s Critik der Practischen Vernunft. While the French bourgeoisie, by means of the most colossal revolution that history has ever known, was achieving domination and conquering the Continent of Europe, while the already politically emancipated English bourgeoisie was revolutionising industry and subjugating India politically, and all the rest of the world commercially, the impotent German burghers did not get any further than “good will”. Kant was satisfied with “good will” alone, even if it remained entirely without result, and he transferred the realisation of this good will, the harmony between it and the needs and impulses of individuals, to the world beyond. Kant’s good will fully corresponds to the impotence, depression and wretchedness of the German burghers, whose petty interests were never capable of developing into the common, national interests of a class and who were, therefore, constantly exploited by the bourgeois of all other nations. These petty, local interests had as their counterpart, on the one hand, the truly local and provincial narrow-mindedness of the German burghers and, on the other hand, their cosmopolitan swollen-headedness. In general, from the time of the Reformation German development has borne a completely petty-bourgeois character.
- Marx & Engels: The German Ideology
It is an essential condition of capitalism that the technology of production be founded upon knowledge of nature from sources other than manual labour. And how a knowledge thus defined and yet reliable, exact and objectively valid is constituted and indeed possible, is a question which must be answered, especially if we do not share the idealistic belief in the original theoretical capacities of a ‘pure intellect’.
The epistemological interest in science is clearly specified historically and economically by its tie-up with the capitalist mode of production. It is not Kant’s ahistorical concern with the possibility of knowledge and of experience in general and as such. Still, even taking leave from Kant’s philosophical apriorism, the questions he asks — how are pure mathematics and pure science possible? — look confusingly like the ones of concern to us. The reason for the similarity lies in the emphatically ahistorical or rather timeless, universal character of mathematics and science and indeed of all intellectual labour divided from manual labour. While Kant’s answer is in line with this character and, correspondingly, implies the perpetual necessity of the division of head and hand and, hence, the impossibility forever of social classlessness, the answer that we require must, on the contrary, be in historical and materialistic terms.
- Alfred Sohn-Rethel: Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology
A technicality here: both Hegelian dialectics and Marxist dialectics are a fair bit older than Popper’s Critical Rationalism. He actually formulated his theory of Falsifiability as a counter to Marxism after learning about Diamat firsthand from Marxists.
Yes.
Haha, Go off! Dope exposition.
Going on a tangent because I got carried away researching this comment (it’s not you, it’s me. I agree with you, just being a nerd)…
I’m here for it.
Thanks for the write-up and the sources.
Sounds right to me, Samubai.
