By Roger Clarke
Marxism certainly claims to be scientific, but it is not only science. Marxists accept "the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man [humanity] is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence" (Karl Marx).
Without this imperative to change the world, Marxism as a movement would be like a watch without a spring. Marxists scientifically analyse the possibilities for human liberation, and then struggle to make it happen. Marxism is a human science, and to expect it to conform to the standards of celestial mechanics is to impose impossible conditions of detachment and precision. When the Communist Manifesto issued the famous call "Workers of the world, unite!", this was a call to arms, not a "value free" analysis of future trends. Yet if a natural scientist made a prediction and then "tried to make it happen", this would be considered scientific fraud!
In the early writings of Marx and Engels, there was sometimes an element of prophecy. In his searing, passionate indictment The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels predicted that the English workers would soon exact bloody revenge for the sufferings inflicted on them by the bourgeoisie. In a preface written 47 years later, Engels commented on "the many prophecies, amongst others that of an imminent social revolution, that my youthful ardour induced me to venture upon". Referring to that book in 1863, while he was working on Capital, Marx wrote this poignant note to Engels:
"Re-reading your book has made me regretfully aware of our increasing age. How freshly and passionately, with what bold anticipations and no learned and scientific doubts, the thing is still dealt with here! And the very illusion that the result will leap into the daylight of history tomorrow or the day after gives the whole thing a warmth and vivacious humour — compared with which the later 'grey on grey' makes
a damned unpleasant contrast."
Marx had shared his friend's illusions, but when writing his masterpiece, his motto was "to doubt everything". He allowed himself flashes of anger — but no anticipation of the results that would emerge from his study. Capital was a strictly scientific study of the capitalist economy. Marx discussed the methods of science and commented: "In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both." He analysed commodities, labour, value and profit, using the "force of abstraction" with great effect.
In Ron Guignard's definition of pure science (GLW June 1, 1994), the first three criteria are clearly met by Capital (even though the mathematics used is only arithmetic and simple algebra).
Ron himself says: "He correctly predicted that capitalism would always have periodic crises of overproduction and under-consumption. He predicted also that this would lead to greater concentration of power over resources in the hands of fewer companies. Many of his other predictions have come true."
Compare this with bourgeois economics, which "predicted" that crises were impossible (Say's Law), and that if the working day were shortened to 10 hours — no profits could be made (Senior's last hour). Ron's fourth criterion of pure science is infallible prediction, which is not possible for human science — nor indeed for many natural sciences.
If this makes Capital unscientific, how does Ron propose to distinguish between Marx's considerable success and the laughable efforts of the bourgeois apologists? If all Ron is saying is that Marxism is not pure science, he is pushing on an open door. Why would Marx and Engels have founded a movement to struggle for socialism, if its coming was preordained like an eclipse?
The claim that Marxism provides precise and infallible predictions came not from Marx or Engels, but from the official "Marxism-Leninism" that arose in the Soviet Union. This "scientific socialism" was an ideology that gave an aura of objectivity and infallibility to the pronouncements of the ruling bureaucracy. If Ron is just trying to puncture the "scientific" pretensions of Stalinism, all power to his elbow!
Unfortunately, Ron's analysis of Stalinism is: "The proletarian state in all cases has shown up a loophole in Marx's definition of class". This attributes to Marx the Stalinist theory that the state is proletarian because property is nationalised.
For Marx it was the other way around: if the state was proletarian, it would (by degrees) nationalise property. Marx even described a mode of production (the Asiatic mode) which was characterised by the absence of private property in land, where the state officials were the ruling class! This "Asiatic mode of production" was discussed at Tbilisi and Leningrad in 1930-31. One of the participants said: "The Asiatic mode of production ... is theoretically unfounded, because it contradicts the foundations of the Marxist-Leninist teaching on classes and the state."[!!] Stalin, in his Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), omitted any mention of the embarrassing Asiatic mode.
The Russian Revolution was not about calmly watching Marx's predictions about a classless society come true — it was a struggle (which developed into a vicious civil war) to create workers' power. The outcome was the "common ruin of the contending classes" that the Communist Manifesto had noted was the outcome of class struggles in ancient society. The state that was left presiding over this "ruin" initially attempted to rule on behalf of the decimated proletariat, but subsequently crushed any independent political activity by the new working class recruited from the peasantry.
This outcome was not a "loophole in Marx's definition of class", but a defeat for the working-class movement. As the proletarian state became an "Asiatic" state, so the ideas of Marx and Lenin were transmuted into "Marxism-Leninism". Lenin, who shared the misfortune of Marx in having his name blackened in this way, also had ideas that contradicted "Marxist-Leninist teaching". The leadership of the CPSU claimed to be guided by "the sure compass of Marxism-Leninism", whereas Lenin had ridiculed the idea that any such instrument existed:
"It will be a good thing if the German proletariat will be able to take action. But have you measured it, have you discovered an instrument that will show that the German revolution will break out on such-and-such a day?" (Report on War and Peace)
After the second world war, capitalism in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, stabilised and developed. Meanwhile even authentic revolutions, such as the Chinese, were led by "Marxist-Leninists" and resulted in states that were similar to the Soviet Union. Today, despite economic crises, advanced capitalism still shows no signs of collapsing by itself, and there are still no proletarian states in existence.
This has disoriented many Marxists who thought, like Ron, that Marxism cannot be scientific if it failed to predict these developments. But Marxism can only predict the struggle, not the outcome of the struggle. We will achieve better results when we give up wishful thinking about an automatic "world revolution" (which somehow compels "Marxist-Leninists" to create workers' states), and strive to create a Marxist analysis of the contemporary world that is truly scientific.