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Is Marxism scientific – and what is scientific socialism?
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MARXISM is often claimed to be a science. And socialism – the goal and the struggle to achieve it – based on Marxism is sometimes claimed to be “scientific socialism.”
In response many socialists – including Marxists – are uneasy about the term “scientific,” either because it equates the status of both the theory and practice of socialism to that of the natural sciences – physics, chemistry, earth science and biology – or, conversely, because it likens Marxism to other “social sciences” including economics, geography, history, sociology, psychology and so on.
As other answers in this series have argued, Marxism is not just an alternative to conventional (or “bourgeois”) economics; it firmly locates all social sciences within a historical framework and provides a way of understanding the whole of society – including artistic and cultural endeavour.
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Humans are part of the ‘animal kingdom’ – and of nature in general – but also distinct from it and labour (work) is part of what makes us unique, declared Engels. His insights 150 years ago into how our species came to be and how we differ from the rest of nature, are as important today as they were then, says the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Dignity is important to all humans, argues the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School, but it does not come about automatically. In a less than perfect world, dignity can accompany suffering, but the collective dignity of working people is achieved through acting together to change the world.
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library