By Doug Lorimer
Ron Guignard (GLW, June 1) argues that Marxism is not scientific because it fails to meet "a rigorous definition of pure science", and because a series of predictions about the development of society supposedly made by Marx have failed to come true. His argument is based on setting up and knocking down a series of straw persons.
Guignard begins by defining what he calls "pure science" as the examination "of a given system using logic and especially mathematics to model a way the system might work so as to be able without fail to predict its future state, given enough knowledge of its present state" (emphasis added).
Acceptance of such a definition would disqualify Marxism as the scientific study of social evolution since it has never claimed that it could make predictions about the future with mathematical precision. It would also disqualify as "scientific" a whole series of other studies — certainly all of those sciences that make no predictions about the future state of the object of their study (eg, anthropology, archaeology, anatomy, palaeontology).
Not only would Guignard's definition disqualify all of the social sciences (including Marxism) from warranting the designation "scientific", it would also disqualify all of the natural sciences, since none of them is able to predict unfailingly the future state of any given object or system.
We will never have "enough knowledge" of the present state of anything to be able to make totally accurate predictions about its future state, because every material object and system possesses a practically endless number of properties, connections and relations and is in a state of continuous motion and development, giving rise to new connections and new properties. The most that we can do is to reflect objective reality partially, approximately, and relatively, within the limits set by the historical development of social practice at any given time.
What then is science? According to the Macquarie Dictionary, science is "the systematic study of man [sic] and his environment based on the deductions and inferences which can be made, and the general laws which can be formulated, from reproducible observations and measurements of events and parameters within the universe".
What distinguishes science from everyday, empirical knowledge is that science provides knowledge not only of the individual aspects of objects and the external connections between them, but above all tells us the laws that govern nature and society. Science is a system of theoretical knowledge which seeks to uncover the relatively stable, objectively necessary connections between phenomena.
In every field of study the process of accumulation of empirical data sooner or later leads to the creation of a theory that formulates the laws governing the object of study. The creation of such a theory is a sign that the given field of knowledge is becoming a science in the true sense of the term.
Mechanics became a science when Newton formulated a systematic theory of the basic laws of mechanical motion. The study of electricity became a genuine science only when Maxwell produced a consistent theory of the electromagnetic field. Marx converted socialism into a science through the creation of the theory of historical materialism (which disclosed the general laws of social evolution) and his theory of surplus value and capital (which disclosed the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production).
Guignard argues that we "can liken Marx's science and later developments of it to predictions of weather." Is Guignard arguing that meteorology is not a science? Marx, of course, never claimed his theory would enable us to predict day-to-day events. Rather, it sought to provide an explanation of, and make long-term predictions about, the changes in social relations under the impact of the development of the capitalist mode of production.
The simplest way to test whether or not Marxism is a scientifically correct body of theory is to compare its predictions with experience. Have the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production which Marx formulated in Capital been verified by historical developments since 1867 or not?
Marx predicted that as capitalist industry developed there would be stepped-up technological progress accompanied by the ever-growing importance of fixed capital, accelerated increase in the productivity and intensity of labour, increasing concentration of wealth, transformation of the great majority of economically active people into sellers of labour-power, periodically recurrent recessions, class struggle between capitalists and wage-workers and increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow capitalism. It is sufficient to compare the real history of the period since 1867 with what Marx predicted it would be to see how strongly his theoretical achievement stands up against the experimental test of history.
While acknowledging the correctness of most of Marx's predictions, Guignard questions the scientific character of Marxism because of the supposed discrepancy between "five major predictions Marx made 146 years ago, and the events that really happened." According to Guignard, Marx predicted that (a) the capitalist system would soon collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions; (b) "A leadership of the proletariat would arise in the most advanced capitalist country in the world (Germany at the time) and start a Communist revolution; (c) That revolution would sweep the world; (d) It would end the exploitation of any class by any other class; and (e) As a result it would lead to a life of maximum fulfilment for all of humankind."
Just where Marx is supposed to have made these predictions is not stated by Guignard. However, his reference to "146 years ago" implies that the above predictions were made by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. However, as readers can themselves verify by examining that famous document, the first programmatic presentation of scientific socialism does not contain any of the predictions attributed to Marx by Guignard.
Nowhere in Marx's writings (in 1848 or later) is there a prediction of an automatic collapse of the capitalist system due to its internal contradictions.
Marx certainly described the social and economic tendencies that created the preconditions for the collapse of capitalism: the growth of the working class, of its exploitation, and of organised resistance against that exploitation, are the main levers for the overthrow of capitalism. Centralisation of the productive wealth and growth of the objective socialisation of labour create the economic preconditions for a society based upon collective property and free cooperation by associated producers. But Marx never argued that these tendencies and contradictions of the capitalist system would automatically lead to its replacement by socialism.
Marx was as far removed as any social thinker could be from any fatalistic belief in the automatic effects of economic laws. He repeatedly stressed that people made and had to make their own history, only not in an arbitrary way and independently from the material conditions in which they found themselves. Marx's theory indicated only in very general terms how and why objective contradictions of the capitalist system made its overthrow possible and necessary. But to bring about its overthrow required conscious revolutionary action by the working class during moments of social crisis.
In the Communist Manifesto Marx (and Engels) predicted the outbreak of just such a social crisis in Germany, only a few months before it occurred, but not because Germany was the most developed capitalist country in the world at the time (Britain was). Rather, it was precisely because of the relatively backward character of capitalist development in Germany (which meant that the German bourgeoisie was weaker than the British) that Marx anticipated the impending bourgeois revolution in Germany to create a political relationship of forces that would be favourable for an anti-capitalist revolution through a young proletariat gaining the support of a rebellious peasantry.
As it turned out, the German workers' movement at the time proved to be too weak, both numerically and in its political leadership, to accomplish this. However, Marx's view that the proletarian revolution could begin in a relatively backward capitalist country was confirmed by the Russian Revolution of 1917.
It is certainly true that the capitalist system has survived far longer than Marx expected. But this has not been because the system has developed in essentially other directions than those predicted by Marx. Nor is it because it has been able to avoid periodic repetition of explosive social crises. On the contrary, since the outbreak of the First World War, such crises have become recurrent features of contemporary history.
Why, then, hasn't capitalism been overthrown in the most highly industrialised countries? Why was the overthrow of capitalism confined to one country for 30 years? The answer to that question involves a detailed critical review of 20th century political and social history. However, the strength of Marxism as a science is also demonstrated by the fact that it was the genuine practitioners of Marxism, beginning with Lenin and Trotsky, who provided a coherent answer to these questions. Indeed, they predicted that if workers' power remained isolated in Soviet Russia for a prolonged period, it would be overthrown by pro-capitalist forces.