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.