“To have one basis for life and another for science is apriori a lie.” Karl Marx

Introduction to the Project:

On the Death of Communism and Marxism: 

In 1991, the USSR was disbanded and the capitalist epigones and intelligentsia brayed that Communism was officially dead.

The autopsies and dissections of communism proliferated in mass, often reducible in substance to three assertions, coupled with an inference and diagnosis : socialism is impossible, capitalism is necessary, and so, the end of history is upon us.

The more sophisticated arguments focused on critiques of Marxism – in theory and practice. A mass of literature proliferated charging “orthodox” Marxism with a list of theoretical falsities and fallacies, often treated as a priori “heresies”,  the heresies of  reductionism, economic determinism, teleology and utopianism which led Marxists to commit all sorts of crimes and errancies . Apparently, these theoretical falsities and fallacies lead to, or are strongly implicated in, the development of “dictatorship”.

(Note: As if the belief in the theory and practice of Marxism were a sufficient materialist principle and basis with which to analyze the development of class-conflict in the diverse and integrated concrete social formations dubbed “really-existing” socialism. When sympathetic to the cause, the author will often read into, and identify some moment in the developing theory and practice of a communist -ugh how Gramsci has been abused- and affirm that this piece is in radical discontinuity to Marxism. On this firm and secure anti-orthodox Marxist abstraction , a new child is born- a “neo-Marxism” which extends from a Leclau to a Pablo Iglesias. As if “science” necessarily extends its questions and theory in an ad-hoc manner, continuously scrapping both philosophical principles and its “fundamental” scientific theory.  As if Gramsci were incapable of extending the questions and theory of Marxism in an organic and non-ad hoc manner. The variety in the literature is overwhelming and highly differentiated. From the left, the argument extends in form from Analytic “Marxists” like John Elster, to “Neo-Marxists” like Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe. Much of this accusatory literature against “orthodox” Marxism- with its one-sided accusations- is left unchallenged since Marxists today do not have posses comparable means of ideological production and distribution. In fact, it is a historical irony that Marx and Engels, who militated against all these theoretical deficits or fallacies , are remembered as the greatest purveyors of these errancies.)

Today, the domination and victory of capital over labor is affirmed in the irruption of economic and political crisis. The arrogant and world-defining proclamations of the “Black Book”  become unstable. A whole new generation- including, apparently,  the majority of millennials , rejects capitalism, and in turn consider themselves socialists  what is meant by that every elastic and sliding term, however, is a another question).

Yet, the emergence of anti-capitalism- both left and right- is not a haphazard event and has historical and material causes. In an interview in 2016, Warren Buffet,  is quoted as saying “there’s class warfare alright, but its my class, the rich class, thats making war, and we’re winning” . The emergence of anti-capitalism comes with the fact that for countless years capitalism has been , by almost any “factual” standard, generating criminal and horrid excesses. To give some “selective” , or illustrative,  examples of certain trends in the class-conflict and capitalism today:

In political economy:

Oxfam reports 8 men own more than half the poorest world’s population i.e. 8 people own more than 3.8 billion. Oxfam also reports that in 2017 the richest 1% bagged 82% of the ‘wealth”. Since the recession, this has more or less been a constant trend across the Western world i.e. the majority of newly-created “wealth” disproportionally went to the top 1%. In the same regions, income differentials spiked

Piketty has shown that this “wealth” comes from and is explained by capital ownership, which has led to global trends of increasing inequality across the West (although it is more acutely a problem in “Anglo-Saxon” nations).

There are countless analyses that also show worrying trends in the “real economy”.

The scientific explanation and generalization that capitalist relations of production make it possible and necessary for a class to appropriate the surplus-value of the working-class in various forms of and deductions off profit ( dividends, bit-coin etc.) , and that the relative power of capitalist class to divide and suppress labor and the working-class accounts for rising inequality in the Western World.

In the state,

The long and successful world-wide assault of capital, which intensified with the crisis of profitability and stagflation in the 1970’s, and was further galvanized and strengthened by the fall of the USSR, has led to the complete decimation for many years of an effective anti-capitalist bloc in America or elsewhere. The effects have been myriad in conu

has led to such a point of desperation that for the first time since the fall of the USSR- barring important developments and movements – history seems to have resumed at full pace.

What follows from this desperation, what happens and  what people do faced with the problems posed is contingent upon a number of objective and subjective circumstances. But it is necessary to understand those objective and subjective conditions, and in order to do so it is necessary to have a theory which is also a guide to action.

Why do we need such a theory and guide to action ? For, to start with an image, in the words of the French revolutionary socialist Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray,  “he who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.”

To navigate treacherous seas and shores with false maps, is to most likely guarantee ship-wreck. A theory and guide to action predicated on the eternity, or practical modifiability, of capitalism is a false map. Let us then find the correct map, so that we may avert a crash and reach safety!

Marxism is that “concrete analysis of concrete conditions” and guide to action.

 The Ideological and Theoretical Crisis of Today: 

The scope and extent of the crisis is total. In the words of Nancy Fraser:

“At first sight, today’s crisis appears to be political. Its most spectacular expression is right here, in the United States: Donald Trump—his election, his presidency, and the contention surrounding it. But there is no shortage of analogues elsewhere: the UK’s Brexit debacle; the waning legitimacy of the European Union and the disintegration of the social-democratic and center-right parties that championed it; the waxing fortunes of racist, anti-immigrant parties throughout northern and east-central Europe; and the upsurge of authoritarian forces, some qualifying as proto-fascist, in Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific. Our political crisis, if that’s what it is, is not just American, but global.

What makes that claim plausible is that, notwithstanding their differences, all these phenomena share a common feature. All involve a dramatic weakening, if not a simple breakdown, of the authority of the established political classes and political parties. It is as if masses of people throughout the world had stopped believing in the reigning common sense that underpinned political domination for the last several decades. It is as if they had lost confidence in the bona fides of the elites and were searching for new ideologies, organizations, and leadership. Given the scale of the breakdown, it’s unlikely that this is a coincidence. Let us assume, accordingly, that we face a global political crisis.

As big as that sounds, it is only part of the story. The phenomena just evoked constitute the specifically political strand of a broader, multifaceted crisis, which also has other strands—economic, ecological, and social—all of which, taken together, add up to a general crisis.”

If a social formation is an integrated whole of distinct levels of complexity – “economic”, “political”, “ideological” “scientific”- in which the effects at one level can imply “feedback” at other levels i.e. in which the various levels enter into historically-contingent, complex and integrated causal loops – then it is intelligible why there has been a profound and diverse ideological crisis, a crisis of the dominant ideas and theories on society.

The dominant ideas and theories no longer suffice to understand how things are and how they got to this point. Above, all there is a feeling that these ideas and theories do not see how things should be and how to change them. There is a need to subject ruling-ideas and above all theories to critique and to pose a scientific theory and practice.

This need for a scientific theory and practice is not only felt by radicals, Marxists, but is expressed by economists, even if the extreme conclusion is not made by most that a revolution in theory is connected to revolution in practice. For instance, Krugman argues that the conventional neo-classical SDEMs are dangerously inadequate if not false. The doubt runs so deep in the community that many no longer think it possible to develop the theory of economics on the basis of such fundamentals, to save it in a non ad-hoc manner by auxiliary hypotheses and methods, and that the “fundamentals” must be scrapped entirely and the theory subjected to comprehensive revision. At this historical and theoretical moment one might feel like Alice in Wonderland when she tells the Cat, here the analogue for the personification of ruling ideas and theories,  “but I don’t want to go among mad people,” to which they retort “Oh, you can’t help that,” “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”…“You must be,” “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

But whatever is meant by “theory and practice”, why do we “need” theory in politics? Why do we need something as “harsh” and “dogmatic” as a  “scientific” theory? What is a “scientific” theory and is it a theory which is necessarily non-partisan? Why do we need Marxism , and if we need it how is Marxism both a scientific theory and a practice of effecting , within historically-contingent limits , social transformation?

Scientific Theory is a Prerequisite for Successful Political Action :

The need for theory in politics is not arbitrary. The rejection of theory in politics is not only dishonest, but dangerous and theory is . If politics includes the action of concrete individuals in concrete relations in a concrete social formation under the condition and the limits of the class-struggle to struggle and make a possible state of affairs a concrete reality then it is imperative that the concrete individuals in association enter with objective knowledge of the situation,  in order to apprise the possibilities, and deliberate as to means to realize the possible state of affairs.

Here, I will have to lay out the argument in an extremely schematic fashion. This means that the elucidation and argumentation for certain highly abstract and general propositions will be a matter of development, in the work set out for the blog.

All objective knowledge in some way presupposes a, or a mix of, theories. There is no such thing as a hard-and-fast distinction between “fact” and “statement”- “observable” and “theoretical” terms- “immediate” and “mediate” knowledge. I mean by that here that all objective knowledge- no matter how banal and brute it may seem- presupposes abstractions and generalizations that correspond to and explain, in relative and non-trivial limits, observations.

(Note: I mean by “relative and trivial limits” that insofar as there is no necessary, conceptual relation between human knowledge and the world, that for an abstraction and generalization to correspond to reality is not necessarily guaranteed but is subject to a process of revision and correction.  The attribute “objective” is not absolute, for knowledge does not imply a disjunction between “absolute certainty” or “absolute ignorance”- but is the passage from “ignorance” to knowledge” – from abstraction to concrete theory that increasingly corresponds to reality. It is doctrinaire and dogmatic to introduce hard-and-fast distinctions, false disjunctions and rigid classifications which would have us consider ideal history either as a repetition of either absolute ignorance or absolute certainty in which the fateful conclusion is absolute skepticism about knowledge, theory and practice. The false disjunction would also find us in the situation of denying historical reality to any of these terms, precluding a “reflective” understanding of concepts and of these concepts in particular. )

For instance, “everyday” items of language are not distinguished from scientific theory in absolute kind, they both imply a degree of abstraction and generalization.

 In the most general distinction of usage, an abstraction is distinguished from the process of abstraction “to abstract. I am speaking however of the product of the process i.e. an abstraction and leave the question of the origin or the genesis of abstractions for now.      An abstraction picks out and an item in the total context and fixes it. A generalization picks out something that exists across these items and fixes it. Abstractions and generalizations are translated into items of language and are applicable to but irreducible to  insofar as they correspond to something real. Hence, both “everyday” language and scientific theory pick out items and/or translate them into generalities about nature and society, but they are distinguished in the fact that scientific language is relatively more objective and successful in explaining and (partially) effecting concrete states of affairs than “everyday” language, because its abstractions and generalizations correspond to the structure and “causal” mechanisms which produce the phenomena from which such “common” items of language are abstracted and generalized.

The passage from “everyday” language to scientific theory is a passage from the abstract to the complex . To give a guiding formula where “concrete-abstract” are treated as duals:  if A is a more abstract than B , and B more concrete than A , then B includes everything in A, but not the converse. And here “includes” is taken to mean that scientific theory can actually situate and explain the “everyday” items of the language of phenomenon. Yet, more precisely, scientific theory is more concrete , because it does not simply include or deal with the “surface of events” but seeks to explain the phenomenon by accounting for the cause that produced the effect, and the conclusion of the history of science is that it does not reduce the “surface of events” to a kind of cause- the elements- but to many differing kinds of causal mechanisms operating alongside each other in a conjunction to produce the “surface of events”.

The passage from “everyday” language to scientific theory is a passage from the abstract to the concrete, a passage of abstraction and generalization from the “surface of events” to the structure and complexity of reality.

A scientific theory , or mix of theories, is epistemologically necessary in acquiring and developing objective knowledge. I mean by “epistemologically” necessary that a theory is precisely a means of explaining and/or predicting certain observations , the order of appearances, by the existence and action of theoretical structure and entities , and that such knowledge is objective and true because some of these structures and entities exist, as well as generate the phenomenon under attention and study.

For instance, in order to explain certain observable changes in nature, say the difference of color in atomic emission spectroscopy, it is characteristic within the history scientific theory to introduce at first an imaginary hypothesis of the electron, along with a theory of atomic structure and valency- and hence by extension existential hypotheses about structures and kinds. The Bohr model, which suffered the inconsistency of implying immediate, timeless energy transference, was such a model of atomic structure and valency that  allowed us to understand the existence and action of some unobservable structure and kind in order to account for the emission of light in the observation of color-change. However, though the model of atomic structure and valency was rejected, the work of science has continuously confirmed the existence of the kind known as “electron”, of an atomic-structure over and above the particular model, even if the understanding of such putative structures and kinds is partial and relative i.e. in the process of development.

It can therefore be seen that scientific method often proceeds by a straight-forward realist and relativist epistemology. Scientific theory is , in part , the process of acquiring theory about the dispositions and tendencies of real kinds or things. This means that in the process of acquiring knowledge, scientific theory includes statements about unobservable kinds or things which have certain properties and relations with others unobservable things or kinds, and certain ways of changing or affecting other unobservable things or kinds. The statements of scientific discourse imply that this or that is possible for a unobservable thing or kind, and hence this or that is impossible for a unobservable thing or kind i.e. a distinction as to what is possible and impossible for a thing, kind or structure which are either unobservable, detectable, or inferable.  Hence,  the statements of scientific discourse imply existential statements about unobservable entities, and propositions of possibility that distinguish what is possible and impossible for such entities, and as a consequence what is a possible and impossible phenomenon. For instance, the premise that “there is no closed-system in the universe, that is a system in which mass and energy cannot “escape” , and the laws of thermodynamics imply propositions of possibility and impossibility which allow us to conclude from scientific theory that it is impossible to come into contact with a closed-system with perpetual motion and energy, and the construction of a perpetual motion machine is impossible, since the contrary conclusion contravenes the initial condition and first and second law of thermodynamics and implies a straight contradiction.

Hence, a theory , or mix of theories, is epistemologically necessary in using and developing objective knowledge to make happen certain concrete state of affairs- that is in using objective knowledge to directed and purposive ends. The unobservable structure and kinds can be acted on in determinate ways to produce determinate effects either observable or detectable. “Successful” action presupposes objective knowledge as persons must enter into the situation knowing, at the level of structure, the conditions of change and what is possible/impossible to accomplish. On this basis, a protocol to action might be established.

Hence, I mean by “objective” knowledge, as has been noticed above, the relative and non-trivial correspondence of theory with reality in which reality is not reduced to the order of observations, but explained and accounted for by its structure and depth. The “objective” knowledge of these causal mechanisms allows for the development of practical methods which correspond to necessary condition on the generation of certain phenomenal effects -whether in CERN, the laboratory, industrial production, or political organizing and action- i.e. for certain purposes. Such a practical criterion, in part, specifies a epistemic condition – a feedback loop- for the test of the (relative and non-trivial) objectivity and truth of a theory.

(Note: But practice does not create the truth, nor does the truth “depend” on practice, rather practice is the human-means of discovering truth.  Scientific theory is precisely objective knowledge which explains and accounts things at the level of structure and hence the genuine causes of phenomenon.)

It is dishonest to reject theory in politics because it is always the case that in the political situation one enters and presupposes certain abstractions and generalizations about the situation,  a sort of unformulated and unconscious theory. It is an objective fact that people enter into relations and situations presupposing certain abstractions and generalizations. The success of ones action will in part presuppose an objective analysis of the situation, and hence in some way a theory.  The abstractions and generalizations of theory have in many instances a practical function of ensuring that certain actions are possible and how they can be accomplished.

It is dangerous to reject theory in politics because if these abstractions and generalizations are uncritically assumed, and they “stay at the surface” of reality,  then in politics “we” will go no further than thinking about how one can modify, for instance the appearance of certain problems in contemporary capitalist society, without genuinely understanding the need to change the structure and cause of the order of appearances. Hence, one is liable to believe that certain impossible states of affair are possible by human-action, since they seem in the abstract, and in isolation to be possible based on experience.

Marxism as a Scientific Theory and Prerequisite for Successful Revolutionary Politics: 

As initial desideratum such a scientific theory must imply an analysis of 1) the conditions,  structure, and development of the contemporary social form 2) hence, the historical conditions for the real transformation and movement of the contemporary  , into a kind of society which is made possible by those conditions 3) and a protocol for thinking about concrete action to make that potential state of society a concrete state of affairs. 4) It must also abstract and generalize the basic conditions of the potential form from contemporary historical conditions, as well as ground its value-system in the possibility and necessity of social transformation. That is the scientific theory must be both a theory and practice, as well as an “ethic” of social transformation.

 

False or mystifying theory is no guide to action. Such a theory may allow in part for the practical management of this or that aspect of a process, but the understanding is haphazard and hence the control of mechanisms is ineffective.

For instance, Capital III demonstrates by a process of abstraction that the LTV and the production of total surplus-value, the theory of “production-prices”, and the postulate of the rising OCC in the competition of capitals, implies that over time the average-rate of profit declines. Hence, the necessary, internal condition of capitalist accumulation and reproduction becomes a condition of capitalist crisis and destruction. Here, the “intentional”, collective action of many agents of capital leads to an emergent tendency to destroy the condition of capitalist accumulation and reproduction.

Taking Account of The Failures and Defeats of Marxism :

Revisions of Marxism: Posing the Question of Theory and Practice :

Introducing The Controversy : The Question of Materialism and Science, Materialism and Idealism

There is probably no topic today in leftist politics and academia more divisive than the issue of “science” and “scientific objectivity” i.e. the question of whether it is possible to attribute objectivity to scientific theory. The problem of the objectivity of scientific theory is not new. I want to turn to a few cases within the history of science in which scientific discovery

A Few Cases of The Dispute : 

One finds stunningly “modern” disputes over the objectivity of scientific theory in 16th century astronomy. For instance, The “Fundamentum Astronomium” of Nicholas Raimarus Ursus published in 1588 offers an account of the function of fictions in astronomical theory:

A hypothesis or fictitious assumption is an imaginary picture of certain imaginary circles in an imaginary model of the system of the universe capable of capable of accommodating observations of the heavenly bodies , and invented , assumed and introduced for preserving and saving the motions of heavenly bodies and for expressing them in quantitative terms. I say an imaginary picture of an imaginary model of the system of the universe , not a true and genuine one that we cannot know. It is a picture , not of the system itself, but of such a model of it as may be imagined by the mind and embraced conceptually. The hypothesis we invent are nothing more than fabrications which we imagine and construct concerning the system of the universe. Therefore, it is quite unnecessary, nor should it be demanded, from the devisers of hypotheses , that those hypotheses should correspond altogether, and in all respects , and in every way to the system of the universe itself (for such hypotheses cannot , I think, be constructed), and we may take it that everywhere, and in every form, of constructed hypotheses of which a great many such forms can be imagined and presented, certain very stupid absurdities remain provided only that they agree with , and correspond to the quantitative aspects of the motions and not the motions themselves,  and provided that the quantitative relations of the heavenly motions can be preserved and saved by them. For otherwise they would not be hypotheses or ( what is the same thing) fictitious assumptions:  but they would be true ( and not invented) representations of the true (and not imaginary) form of the system of the universe. And so hypotheses cannot be faulted for being assumed contrary to the common principles of other arts and sciences, even if they be assumed contrary infallible and most certain authority of the Holy Scripture. For it is the function of hypotheses to investigate , to hunt down, and to illicit the true answer to the questions, by means of fictitious or false assumptions. For it is permitted and allowed astronomers as a sort of astronomical license to invent hypotheses, whether they be true or false and fictitious, of such a kind that they may be sufficient for the phenomena and appearances of the heavenly motions, and may duly exhibit their quantitative relations, and in this way may achieve the goal and target of their art. In just the same way as tends to be done in most other branches of learning , in which , for the most part, not truths, and not even probabilities, let me tell you, are assumed, but those assumptions are wisely made which yield the most useful results. (Translation by T.I.M. Beardsworth).

Contrast this account with the account of Christopher Clavius in Sphaerem Ionnis de Sacro Bosco  :

Finally we may conclude our topic as follows: just as in natural philosophy we arrive at knowledge of causes via their effects , so too in astronomy, which has to do with heavenly bodies very far distant from us, we can only attain to knowledge of the bodies themselves , of how they are arranged and constituted , through study of their effects, that in their movements which are invisible to us. For just as natural philosophers have inferred, with Aristotle, from the alternating birth and decay that occurs in nature, the existence of a prime matter together with two-principles of natural change and many other things so too astronomers through studying the varying motions of the heavens from sunrise to sunset, and from sunset to sunrise, found a fixed number of heavenly spheres; some have said eight, because they found only 8 different kinds of motion, others ten, having noted ten different kinds; in the same way, using other observations, they have determined the arrangement of the heavenly spheres as we expounded at length in chapter 1. It is therefore convenient and entirely reasonable that astronomers should look to the particular motions of the planets and to the various appearances to inform them of the number of particular spheres that carry the planet around with such varying motions and their arrangement and shapes : on condition however causes can thereby adequately be assigned to all the motions and appearances and nothing absurd or inconsistent with natural philosophy can be inferred therefrom. Wherefore , since eccentric spheres and epicycles enable the astronomers effortlessly to preserve all the appearances, as is clear partly from what has been said, and may even more plainly be understood from their theories, and since no absurdity follows from them, and nothing inconsistent with natural philosophy ,as will soon be agreed, once we have dealt with the objections that tend to leveled against such spheres by their opponents ; justifiably therefore, have the astronomers concluded that the planets travel in eccentric orbits, and epicycles, not in concentric , since the later do not allow us to preserve all the manifold variety displayed by the planets in their motions.

But our opponents try to undermine this argument saying that while they concede that all the appearances can be saved by postulating eccentric and epicycles, it does not follow from this that such spheres are to be found in nature; on the contrary they are wholly fictitious. For 1) perhaps all the appearances can be saved in a more convenient way though we have not yet discovered it; moreover 2) they may be truly saved by the above-mentioned spheres without the spheres themselves being any the less fictitious , or in any way the true cause of those appearances, just as one may reach a true conclusion even from a false premise , as it is evident from Aristotle’s ‘Dialectic’ .

We can add weight to these objections  from the following considerations: Nicolas Copernicus De Revolutionibus , preserves all the appearances in another way, by postulating, of course, that the firmament is stationary and fixed, and the sun too is fixed in the center of the universe and by assigning three-fold motion to the earth in the third heaven . So eccentrics and epicycles are not necessary for preserving the appearances in the case of the planets . Again, Ptolemy , by means of the epicycles, provides a cause of all the appearances in the case of the sun and preserves them by means of the eccentric. So it cannot be concluded from our third argument that the sun moves in an eccentric , since perhaps it travels in an epicycle. Nonetheless, it must be said that our third argument retains its force and the objection of our opponents is inconclusive. … or if one should accept that what has been found in the actual cause, because it has some connection with the effects from which it has been inferred, then eccentrics and epicycles must also be allowed as causes, seeing as they have so close a connection with the appearances, that they are able to preserve them all easily by means of their motions. Next, if it is not right to conclude from the appearances that eccentric and epicycles exist int he heavens because a true conclusion can be drawn from false premises, then the whole of natural philosophy is doomed. For in the same way whenever someone draws a conclusion from an observed effect I shall say “That is not really its cause. It is not true because a true conclusion can be drawn from a false premise.” And so all the natural principles discovered by philosophers will be destroyed. Since this is absurd, it is wrong to suppose the force and weight of our argument is weakened by our opponents. It can also be said that the rule of dialectic , that truth follows from falsehood, is irrelevant, because it is one thing to infer a truth from a false premise, and quite another to preserve the apperances by means of eccentrics and epicycles. For, in the former case it is by virtue of the syllogistic form that a true conclusion is drawn from a false premise”(Translation by T.I.M. Beardsworth).

For Ursus, science is the process of constructing and positing hypotheses which account for and make conceptually intelligible the order of appearances and observations. These hypotheses are imaginary and the entities of which they speak have an existence analogous to that assumed of fiction i.e. they have no independent reality. The scientific discourse and its pieces refer to entities, much like the discourse and pieces of fiction refer to putative places and people. Hence, it is not correct to ask about the truth, or falsity of a theory. Instead, that theory is best which can most elegantly, and plausibly encompass and reconstruct observations.

It is worth-noting that Ursus mentions the epistemological necessity of constructing an “imaginary picture of an imaginary model of the system of the universe” – because it is epistemically impossible for humans to access “the system of the universe” itself. However, for Ursus the fact of picturing the universe and positing a model of a system implies that the picture or universe must “correspond in all ways” (?!) with the “actual” system in order for the picture of the model of the universe to be considered true and hence, objective knowledge.  So, Ursus is lead to conclude , perhaps validly, that the hypothesis and theory “correspond to the quantitative aspects of the motions and not the motions themselves”.

Yet, for Clavius science is the process of constructing knowledge of the causal mechanisms producing phenomenon.  Is characteristic of science, to explain and predict an observation, or a sequence of observations,  by imputing “unobservable” causes to the appearances and observations. That is  In the process a certain non-deductive form of inference is drawn from the evidence to the theory, between the unobservable term and the observable phenomenon.

In turn, the traditional conclusion made from this is that the theory of the cause is true just in case there actually is such-and-such a cause

We see in broad outlines, the controversy over “scientific realism” and of the attribution of objectivity to scientific theory”. Whereas the first could be classified today as a robust case of “fictionalism” – the second exemplifies an interesting sort of “realism” i.e. a blend of causal realism coupled and epistemological relativism.

Yet, we also see reflected in these debates deeper issues of ontology and epistemology : “i

And from it all we abstract the most general question of philosophy :

I have established this blog for the purpose of posing and in part answering certain questions about science and Marxism.  I will try to be as systematic as possible in answering these questions. These questions fall into four-broad, and interrelated categories:

1. The question of materialism: the question of objectivity and truth in theory and practice, the question of the independent existence of the world in contradistinction to thought – taken to mean any kind of human ideation
2. The question of dialectical materialism: the question of the correspondence of theory and reality, the question of the categories of space and time, the question of structure and complexity, the question of causation and complex-interaction
3. The question of theory and evidence: the question of the irreducibility of theoretical discourse,  the question of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, the question of pessimistic meta-induction, and the circular argumentation of realism, the question of inference to the best explanation , the question of deduction , induction and abduction, the question of analogy and models in science, the question of experiments and observations, the question of differing functions of experiments and observations, the question of experimental equipment and material, the question of skepticism
4. The question of the development of science: the question of history and theory-change,  the question of the internal and external development of science,  the question of continuity and incommensurability, the question of the historical emergence of science, the question of the place and function of science in society, the question of science and production, the question of science and  state, the question of the scientific institutions, the question of science and ideology, the question of science and politics, the question of science and religion, the question of science and racism

And above all I seek to understand the conditions and limits of science when it is under the capitalist mode of production and of the possible emancipation of science under socialism.

In posing and attacking these questions I will deal with many different traditions, I hope Marxists see that I am trying to answer the same questions that were posed by Marx and taken up by countless successors.

Above all, my concern of course is to put the materialist dialectic in action in the analysis of science, of its structure, development and history, but also the specific analysis of scientific discoveries and theories, experiments and controlled observations, perceptual equipment and the place and effect of even   . Many of my posts will be readings and analyses, notes and jottings on texts. A preliminary plan of reading

1. Classical Marxist Philosophy of Science: Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Axelrod, Pannekoek, Bogdanov,  Lenin, Bukharin, Hessen, Joffe, Vavilov, Zavadovsky, Trotsky, Preobrazhensky,  Dzietgen
2. Anglo-Saxon Marxist Philosophy of Science : Haldane, Caudwell, Bernal, Cornforth
3. French Philosophy of Science : Duhem, Poincare,  Cavailles, Koyre, Canguillhem Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze
4. “post-Stalinist” Soviet Philosophy of Science: Illeynkov, Gortsky, Naletov, Lektorsk
5. Contemporary Marxist Philosophy of Science : Cohen, Bhaskar, Collier, Ruben, Lewin, Lewotin, Singer , Bellamy Foster, Sheehan , Wood ,
6. Analytic Philosophy of Science: Carnap, Popper, Suppe, Frank, Bohm, Ryle, Hempel, Nagel, Lakatos, Kuhn, Salmon, Feyerabend , Harre, Van Frassen, Lewis,  Kitcher, Cartwright, Hacking, Papineau, Psillos, Maudlin, Albert