3 ms·

To make a long complicated story short, Marxism is the study of how class contradictions resolve themselves. Using Hegelian dialectics, it poses different class

To make a long complicated story short, Marxism is the study of how class contradictions resolve themselves. Using Hegelian dialectics, it poses different classes against each other and theorizes what the synthesis would become. It could be said that this (and branching philosophies like critical theory) is the ultimate end result of Western philosophy, hence the leftward tilt of the humanities. In an ideal sense, Marxist theory should be capable of updating itself to match actual conditions. In a degenerated dogmatic sense, it can be used to force actual conditions to fit within a narrow and false theory. There is no end to the different interpretations of Marxism and the arguments and debates between them, because there's only so many real world examples that could be tested and examined. Compared to an engineering problem, Marxist theory ends up touching so many fields and variables on a global scale that the problem space ends up being orders of magnitude greater. There's too much to examine and make sense of, so interpretations end up being strategies on how to navigate through this problem space and how to achieve Marxist theories and goals, either orthodixcally or heterodoxically. In the example of that anthropologist, it does not go into detail with what the Marxists disagreed with. However, I think a Marxist argument could be made for the wars over women in that their society is of a more primitive stage where stealing women was a part of their socioeconomics. Their system works out so that a population equilbirum is achieved. In works like Engel's On the Origin of the Family..., there is a Marxist interpretation of how humans orient themselves accordingly to the Marxist theory that the base economics form the superstructure of the culture and society. In more advanced societies, they went through agricultural revolutions that vastly increased the population and reshaped how societies must function to keep order. Another example of Marxist theory gone wrong could be the USSR, and you have Marxists either defending or condemning it for various reasons. It could then be said that the Chinese Marxists learned from the USSR to create their own branched off lineage to prevent similar collapse and to forge their own path towards the Marxist stages of socialism and communism. (And of course you have Marxists condemning China too. Tl;Dr: the arguments are largely either China must develop before being advanced enough for socialism or China must advance to a socialist stage or else it will gravitate back towards complete capitalist control.) Edit: That being said, while STEM has rigorous methodologies to verify truths, the fields can also be swept up by orthodoxies and heterodoxies and different interpretations. There's always been the derisive websh*t meme for fads on Hacker News. Or there's the unsolved problems in physics with different interpretations to resolve them. The scientific process did have its roots in philosophical developments after all.

WalterBright 4y ago
Marxist failures are always written off as being caused by not being "true" Marxism. STEM has had many false theories (like the sun revolves around the earth). The virtue of STEM is when the facts contradict the theories, the theories get revised, even if the old guard has to die off before the corrected theory replaces it. With Marxism, however, the facts get re-written to conform to Marxism, rather than the other way around. One of the beauties of the scientific method is it tests the predictions a theory makes. If the predictions come true, the theory is validated. If the predictions don't pan out, the theory is false. A famous example is Einstein's Relativity theory predicted that gravity bends light. Einstein became world famous when decades later, this bending was observed. Marxist theory also makes predictions, but none of those predictions pan out. This never discourages the critical thinkers in the humanities, which leaves me unimpressed with the critical thinking skills of it.
- techno_tsar 4y ago
  This is a seriously cold take that’s infamously descended from Karl Popper’s argument that Marxism is unscientific. It’s obviously the case that Marxism is unscientific under Popper’s criterion of falsifiability for science, but 1) it’s contentious in Popper’s field itself on whether this criterion is right (it is generally accepted today that he is wrong) and 2) it’s contentious on whether Popper even understands Marx’s theory of history, which is where his criticism comes from, and 3) even if we decide by fiat that the predictions made by Marxism are unscientific, that does not preclude it from being a source of knowledge, or prevent Marxism from being imported as a normative political or ethical framework. The whole “not true Marxism” thing usually comes from the mouths of people who’ve never read Marx, let alone explicitly non-Marxist thinkers who were influenced by Marx. In other words, the kinds of people who have never given this serious thought at all, but have likely watched some YouTube videos or read a couple articles. There is really no such thing as “true Marxism”. Marxism in practice has ranged from the USSR to Zapatista, which are very different from one another, but they are both no more “truly Marxist” than the other. The only person who could decide that is probably the guy himself, who is long dead. >This never discourages the critical thinkers in the humanities, which leaves me unimpressed with the critical thinking skills of it. If nuance and actual engagement with primary source material (as opposed to whatever it is you’re doing) does not count as “critical thinking”, then I strongly believe we cannot have any further discussion here.

WalterBright 4y ago

Marxist failures are always written off as being caused by not being "true" Marxism. STEM has had many false theories (like the sun revolves around the earth). The virtue of STEM is when the facts contradict the theories, the theories get revised, even if the old guard has to die off before the corrected theory replaces it. With Marxism, however, the facts get re-written to conform to Marxism, rather than the other way around. One of the beauties of the scientific method is it tests the predictions a theory makes. If the predictions come true, the theory is validated. If the predictions don't pan out, the theory is false. A famous example is Einstein's Relativity theory predicted that gravity bends light. Einstein became world famous when decades later, this bending was observed. Marxist theory also makes predictions, but none of those predictions pan out. This never discourages the critical thinkers in the humanities, which leaves me unimpressed with the critical thinking skills of it.

techno_tsar 4y ago
This is a seriously cold take that’s infamously descended from Karl Popper’s argument that Marxism is unscientific. It’s obviously the case that Marxism is unscientific under Popper’s criterion of falsifiability for science, but 1) it’s contentious in Popper’s field itself on whether this criterion is right (it is generally accepted today that he is wrong) and 2) it’s contentious on whether Popper even understands Marx’s theory of history, which is where his criticism comes from, and 3) even if we decide by fiat that the predictions made by Marxism are unscientific, that does not preclude it from being a source of knowledge, or prevent Marxism from being imported as a normative political or ethical framework. The whole “not true Marxism” thing usually comes from the mouths of people who’ve never read Marx, let alone explicitly non-Marxist thinkers who were influenced by Marx. In other words, the kinds of people who have never given this serious thought at all, but have likely watched some YouTube videos or read a couple articles. There is really no such thing as “true Marxism”. Marxism in practice has ranged from the USSR to Zapatista, which are very different from one another, but they are both no more “truly Marxist” than the other. The only person who could decide that is probably the guy himself, who is long dead. >This never discourages the critical thinkers in the humanities, which leaves me unimpressed with the critical thinking skills of it. If nuance and actual engagement with primary source material (as opposed to whatever it is you’re doing) does not count as “critical thinking”, then I strongly believe we cannot have any further discussion here.