Page 1 of 2

help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 8th, 2018, 12:56 pm
by kordofany
Is Marxism a science or a theory and how do we distinguish between science and theory?

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 3:18 am
by Burning ghost
Help yourself.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 4:24 am
by ThomasHobbes
Marxism is a theory of economic history.

As for the rest of your question. You need to understand the word theory. You are using it as if it were some kind of myth or a speculation.

Theories are ways of looking. And they assert that in given circumstances, consequences will follow. Good theories are well constructed and logical. They predict outcomes, and retrodict past events.

Marx's views hold good for the conditions which he observed about the relations of capital. They hold good for his time, and his ideas still pertain and are used throughout economic thinking. Their predictive value is only lessened to the extent that we now use money in the differently and financial vehicles are used which did not exist. Mostly that just changes the speed of changes.

There is no distinction between theory and science. ALL science is theory.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 11:42 am
by kordofany
ThomasHobbes wrote: June 12th, 2018, 4:24 am Marxism is a theory of economic history.

As for the rest of your question. You need to understand the word theory. You are using it as if it were some kind of myth or a speculation.

Theories are ways of looking. And they assert that in given circumstances, consequences will follow. Good theories are well constructed and logical. They predict outcomes, and retrodict past events.

Marx's views hold good for the conditions which he observed about the relations of capital. They hold good for his time, and his ideas still pertain and are used throughout economic thinking. Their predictive value is only lessened to the extent that we now use money in the differently and financial vehicles are used which did not exist. Mostly that just changes the speed of changes.

There is no distinction between theory and science. ALL science is theory.
ok
another question:
Marxists say that the dialectical materialism is methodology?
I do not understand what they mean by methodology. (Is it a theory or a methodology?)

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 12:12 pm
by Alias
Methodology is the way in which one approaches a problem.
There are different ways to look for solutions, or to work out ideas, or to organize information. It's a statement of operative procedure.
When a scientist decides to conduct a series of experiments to test a theory, he first sets out what the experiment is supposed to show; what question it's intended to answer. Then he states how he will go about it, the way data will be collected and the criteria by which those data will be evaluated. That's his methodology.
Similarly, when a historical researcher, a statistician, a sociologist or pedagogue presents a paper on any subject in his area, he states at the outset what he intended to find out and how he went about finding it out.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 12:32 pm
by kordofany
Alias wrote: June 12th, 2018, 12:12 pm Methodology is the way in which one approaches a problem.
There are different ways to look for solutions, or to work out ideas, or to organize information. It's a statement of operative procedure.
When a scientist decides to conduct a series of experiments to test a theory, he first sets out what the experiment is supposed to show; what question it's intended to answer. Then he states how he will go about it, the way data will be collected and the criteria by which those data will be evaluated. That's his methodology.
Similarly, when a historical researcher, a statistician, a sociologist or pedagogue presents a paper on any subject in his area, he states at the outset what he intended to find out and how he went about finding it out.
Yes, I understand that, there are several methods, comparative, descriptive, and the historical method, but is the material dialectical is a method?

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 2:27 pm
by Alias
"For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher." https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm
All that really means is: Look at the subject, not as a singular thing, but as part of a bigger process. Every proposition has a counter-proposition. In each encounter, one idea or solution wins over its opposite, but is changed in the process. That altered proposition will have an appropriate new counter-proposition, and so on, as you refine the idea, getting closer to the truth, the essence, or the ideal resolution.

Here is a scholarly paper on the more general applications of the method.
https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/clsew/User ... Oct_18.pdf

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 3:57 pm
by kordofany
Alias wrote: June 12th, 2018, 2:27 pm
"For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher." https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm
All that really means is: Look at the subject, not as a singular thing, but as part of a bigger process. Every proposition has a counter-proposition. In each encounter, one idea or solution wins over its opposite, but is changed in the process. That altered proposition will have an appropriate new counter-proposition, and so on, as you refine the idea, getting closer to the truth, the essence, or the ideal resolution.

Here is a scholarly paper on the more general applications of the method.
https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/clsew/User ... Oct_18.pdf
I read a side of the paper, and I think I could not distinguish the dialectical materialism as a methodology from being conducive to chaos rather than organizing the data. it seems mess-olog more than methodology.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 4:42 pm
by ThomasHobbes
kordofany wrote: June 12th, 2018, 11:42 am
ThomasHobbes wrote: June 12th, 2018, 4:24 am Marxism is a theory of economic history.

As for the rest of your question. You need to understand the word theory. You are using it as if it were some kind of myth or a speculation.

Theories are ways of looking. And they assert that in given circumstances, consequences will follow. Good theories are well constructed and logical. They predict outcomes, and retrodict past events.

Marx's views hold good for the conditions which he observed about the relations of capital. They hold good for his time, and his ideas still pertain and are used throughout economic thinking. Their predictive value is only lessened to the extent that we now use money in the differently and financial vehicles are used which did not exist. Mostly that just changes the speed of changes.

There is no distinction between theory and science. ALL science is theory.
ok
another question:
Marxists say that the dialectical materialism is methodology?
I do not understand what they mean by methodology. (Is it a theory or a methodology?)
A way of looking at a problem; method.
Maybe you should start with a dictionary of philosophical and scientific terms?

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 4:59 pm
by Alias
I directed him to one of those. There are lots of others, all readily available.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 5:17 pm
by kordofany
Alias wrote: June 12th, 2018, 4:59 pm I directed him to one of those. There are lots of others, all readily available.
What I would say is that the methodology is a tight control mechanism to use and analyze the data to arrive at highly reliable results. According to this paper, the dialectic material does not appear to me to do so.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: June 12th, 2018, 5:51 pm
by Alias
Ah. That's too bad.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: October 18th, 2018, 7:53 am
by jlaugh
In truth, Marxism is a theory. However, in the eyes of fanatics, it becomes more than a theory. That is, it acquires more validity, which in turn makes Marxism a historic truth (in the eyes of fanatics). Ask hardliners, they will say it is the truth and that life should be fashioned according to the thoughts of Marx. To examine the hard-line stance is to examine the ways in which Marxism is appropriated and, more accurately, misunderstood.

Notice: I am not stating anything about the applicability/relevance of Marxism. I'm merely stating that it's a theory and that hardliners think otherwise.

I, for one, like several things about communism and Marxism, but I am not mentioning any of that here. I don't consider myself a Marxist/Communist, either.

In short, it is a theory, but beware of the hard-line stance.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: October 31st, 2018, 8:45 pm
by Frewah
Marxism certainly isn’t a science even if communist leaders wanted people to think so. I think it’s no more than a hypothesis. In order to be a theory, it would have to be well tested and backed by evidence. It has been tested for some 70 years and the outcome is obvious. In recent times, ’modern communism’ has been applied in Venezuela, hailed by former GDR huggers. The outcome is similar what people exerienced in eastern europe. No educated leaders. The Venezuelan president is a former bus driver, honecker was a roof builder apprentice and Caeucescu was a shoemaker.

Karl marx had no known education as an economist, yet he is described as one. You’re not an economist just because you have ideas that you publish, neither are you a philosopher just because you have a beard.

Had he not used fancy words, coined new words like proletarian and not been bailed out all the time by Engels, then I think he would have been completely forgotten.

Re: help me please:Is Marxism a science or a theory?

Posted: November 1st, 2018, 11:09 am
by Alias
Frewah wrote: October 31st, 2018, 8:45 pm In order to be a theory, it would have to be well tested and backed by evidence.
The theory precedes the testing, or there would be nothing to test. However, there is certainly observation and data before the theory is formulated.
Which parts of Capital are factually incorrect?
It has been tested for some 70 years and the outcome is obvious.
This is factually incorrect.
Where has Marxist theory been put into practice? On a national level, no place: regimes have called themselves Marxist or communist, but were in fact totalitarian and militaristic. Marxist-style parties have been formed voluntarily, and achieved some political success, in countries under the influence of the US, where they were ruthlessly squashed. Neither of these are tests of a theory. They're merely examples of bad governance, of which there is no shortage, in any ideology or economic system.
For actual testing of theory, you would have to look for sharing communities, that operate alongside or underneath, dominant political systems. Say, the Seventh day Adventists or https://www.ic.org/directory/communes/