Marx, Methodology and Science

Marx's Science of Politics

David M. Walker

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138725782
• eBook ISBN: 9781351752909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 2001. The book aims to give a clear and accessible account of Marx's method and an assessment of its scientific validity and relevance to contemporary social science; The key methodological themes of Marx's work and their development are shown with particular attention paid to the elements of dialectics and materialism; Four models of science are outlined-positivism; critical rationalism; scientific conventionalism; scientific realism - and the arguments and evidence both for and against Marx's method corresponding to any of them examined. The conclusion arrived at is that Marx's method is a good example of social scientific practice according to the scientific realist model and that it has a positive contribution to make to social science today.realism.

1 Method in the Early Marx

The most common way of dividing up Marx’s work is between the early and the later works with the dividing line usually put at 1845 and the writing of the pivotal piece, The Theses on Feuerbach. This chapter and the next will follow this practice, although in a modified form as will be seen in chapter two.¹

These early works preceded elaboration of the ‘materialist conception of history’, and are considered by many to be representative of Marx before Marxism, i.e., Marx’s thinking before he arrived at his own distinctive theory of history and society. This has led some commentators, most notably Althusser, to reject them or relegate them to a secondary status in the corpus of Marx’s work.

In addition, supporters of the scientific claim have ignored the early works in favour of the ‘more scientific’ later works, with some, again most notably Althusser, dismissing the early works as ‘pre-scientific’. Equally, those who have asserted the importance of the early works have favoured the view of Marxism as philosophy rather than as science. Fromm with his humanist interpretation of Marxism is typical of these writers.

Contrary to both these viewpoints Marx was developing his scientific method even in the early works. Following Hegel and the other Hegelians Marx was concerned to articulate a complete scientific system. Hegel and his disciples believed they possessed a method by which they could obtain objective knowledge and they contrasted their approach with the unscientific, speculative and intuitive approach of Romantic philosophers such as Schelling. Marx too aimed to produce an objective and true understanding of the world.

The main term used by Hegel and his followers to refer to the scientific enterprise they saw themselves as engaged in was Wissenschaft. This term, although it translates into English as science has a slightly different meaning to the English word. It is not so closely identified with the natural sciences as the English term, but, rather, has a broader sense encompassing a notion of organised knowledge obtained by some form of rigorous or disciplined method. Wissenschaft points to an activity that seeks to yield truth in an objective fashion. Hence, Hegel, his followers and Marx all have described their approaches as scientific without necessarily seeking to imply an identical method to that of the natural sciences.

During this period Marx gradually distances himself first from Hegel and then from the Left Hegelians as his own critical thinking made him aware of the contradictions within Hegelianism and its methodological failings. Hegel claimed his philosophy was the framework for all scientific work, but as the basis for scientific investigation it had serious shortcomings. Many of these were exposed by the Left Young Hegelians like Strauss, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach who moved Hegelianism in a more scientific direction. It was left to Marx to develop a more fully scientific approach through a critique of these Left Hegelians.²

Correctly understood the early works constitute steps in the development of Marx’s thought, important in their own right and necessary to an understanding of Marx’s later work, but not the ‘finished article’. In them Marx comes to terms with Hegelianism and speculative philosophy, and outlines his basic position with regard to political economic theory. Marx is in the process of formulating his approach and method, and of doing the philosophical groundwork which underlies his later writings.

It is clear from the Grundrisse and other evidence that Marx referred back to his early work and utilised ideas he outlined there in the writing of his later works. There is no ‘epistemological break’ or ‘pre-science’- ‘science’ divide. The early philosophising is not at odds with the later ‘scientific’ works; it is their necessary philosophical counterpart, the philosophy of Marx’s science. The early works provide an insight into Marx’s understanding of science.

In his early writings Marx devotes considerable attention to method and in particular to methodological criticisms of other thinkers. The thinking behind these comments remains pertinent throughout Marx’s work and is part of his attempt to construct a truer and more scientific method of investigation of social reality.

Marx’s Methodological Criticisms in the Early Works

Typically Marx develops his own thought through a critique of others, principally Hegel, the Left Hegelians, and the political economists (especially Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill and J-B Say). Hegel features throughout Marx’s early writings, most directly in the CHPR, but always in the background even when not the immediate subject of comment. By looking at Marx’s critical comments about other writers something of his own approach may be discerned.

Marx and Hegel

According to Marx Hegel’s most basic mistake is his inversion of subject and predicate which makes the Idea the subject and empirical reality the predicate. Marx writes in the CHPR, “The crux of the matter is that Hegel everywhere makes the Idea into the subject, while the genuine, real subject… is turned into the predicate.”³ This fundamental error of Hegel’s has, according to Marx, various implications that Marx elaborates into a major critique of Hegel’s methodology.

Hegel’s starting point is the Idea and the abstract concepts he derives from ‘pure being’. Hegel’s abstractions assume the status of reality, they are hypostatised, the realisation of moments of the abstract concept becomes concrete fact. For example, on Hegel’s analysis of the transition from the family and civil society to the political state Marx writes:

…the transition does not result from the particular nature of the family etc, and the particular nature of the state, but from the universal relationship of freedom and necessity. We find exactly the same process at work in the ‘Logic’ in the transition from the sphere of Essence to that of the Concept. In the ‘Philosophy of Nature’, the same transition can be observed from Inorganic nature to Life. It is always the same categories which are made to supply now one sphere and now another with a soul. The problem is merely to discover the appropriate abstract determinants to fit the individual concrete ones.⁴

Hegel’ s abstract treatment of society, i.e., starting from abstractions and treating the concrete as the embodiment of them, leads to the undifferentiated application of general concepts and terms. For example, Hegel applies the term ‘organism’ to the state without indicating any distinction between the state as organism and, say, an animal organism. As far as Hegel’s account goes the respective structure and relation of parts of each may be the same. He defines his terms abstractly in relation to the state/political constitution not because of the specific characteristics of the state/political constitution, but because of the features of the Idea. Marx writes:

The starting-point is the abstract Idea which then develops into the political constitution of the state. We are not concerned with a political Idea but with the abstract Idea in a political form, the mere fact that I say ‘this organism (i,e. the state, the political constitution) is the differentiation of the Idea into various elements, etc’ does not mean that I know anything at all about the specific Idea of the political constitution; the same statement can be made with the same truth about the organism of an animal as about the organism of the state.⁵

Hegel’s abstract and idealist starting point leads him to be more concerned to establish concrete reality as a predicate of the Idea, than to establish the specific nature of actual things.

This critique in the CHPR of the abstract idealism of Hegelian philosophy is continued in the HF. In one passage in particular Marx lampoons ‘speculative philosophy’ by way of an analysis of fruit using the speculative method. Hegelian analysis, according to Marx, inverts the abstract and the concrete making the abstract idea of ‘Fruit’ the true essence, substance, origin and active subject of actual fruit. He writes:

If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea ‘Fruit’, if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea ‘Fruit’, derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then - in the language of speculative philosophy - I am declaring that ‘Fruit’ is the ‘substance’ of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be a pear is not essential to the pear, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence I have abstracted from them, and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea - ‘Fruit’. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to mere forms of existence, modi, of ‘Fruit’.⁶

The concrete is reduced to ‘mere forms of existence’ or ‘semblances’ of the abstract. The abstract idea ‘Fruit’ is derived from real fruit, but Hegelian speculative philosophy takes the abstract idea as the starting point and ‘imagines’ itself to be deriving real fruit from the idea ‘Fruit’. As in the CHPR Marx makes the point that this approach denies significance to concrete distinctions, to the particular:

My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely ‘Fruit’. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is ‘the substance’ - ‘Fruit’ .⁷

Closely related to this criticism of Hegel’s abstract idealism is Marx’s criticism of Hegel for imposin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Method in the Early Marx
• 2 Method in the Later Marx
• 3 Marx and Materialism
• 4 Marx and Dialectics
• 5 Conceptions of Science
• 6 Marx and Science
• Conclusion
• Bibliography