Marxism as Social Science: celebration or nonchalance?

Abstract

Perhaps the longest-standing dispute between Marxism’s proponents and detractors is that as to whether its theoretical and analytical bases are ‘scientific’. Within this question two major positions present themselves. The ‘traditional’ orientation, accepting the superiority of the scientific over the non-scientific, has thus turned upon establishing or refuting the scientific status of Marxism. Hence opponents, following for example Durkheim’s differentiation between science and ideology,¹ have sought to establish it as mere ideology. Popper’s characterisation of Marxism as one among many ‘pseudo-sciences’ epitomizes this general position (see e.g. Popper, 1963, 1980), as Althusser’s proposition of the ‘epistemological break’ in Marx (see Althusser, 1969), can be seen as a Marxist response. A second, more recent approach has however questioned the very idea of science’s superiority to other forms of knowledge, thereby putting a radically different emphasis upon the question of its relationship to Marxism. The plethora of contemporary ‘postmodernist’ writings would for example relegate the question of scientific status to one little short of irrelevance.