Scientific Socialism?

Kirsty kindly provided some feedback to an earlier posting, On the Origin of Species:


"Darwin's theory is accepted as its been scrutinised through the scientific method, and mountains of evidence have been published in respected peer reviewed scientific journals. As far as I know the same isn't true of Marx. Pointing out a few similarities doesn't prove Marx right by association."


Can Socialism be considered scientific? One of Marx's opponents, Ramsay Macdonald, seemed to think so:


Marx’s co-ordination of historical facts and explanation of historical movement from the point of view of the Hegelian left wing brought the whole theory of Socialism from the misty dreams of vague desire to the clearly defined empire of science.


But a better explanation is to be found in our A to Z of Marxism:

In academia and capitalist production a theory is said to be ‘scientific’ if its has been peer-reviewed and approved by practising scientists. In socialist theory, however, science means something different. According to Marx, ‘all science would be superfluous if the outward appearances and essences of things directly coincided’ (Capital, Vol. 2, Ch. 48); and ‘that in their appearances things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well-known in every science except political economy’ (Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 19). Marx argued that his scientific method penetrated the surface of capitalist social relations to reveal their inner workings. His labour theory of value shows the exploitative nature of capitalism, whereas political economy takes capitalism at face value as the free and equal exchange of commodities in the market.



Here from The Western Socialist, Journal of Scientific Socialism in the Western Hemisphere, is a more detailed look at this topic.



"We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain claim to be "scientific socialists" (no doubt to distinguish ourselves from the other kinds, although there is perhaps some ambiguity here as the other kinds are not socialists at all). There are many definitions of "scientific" given in dictionaries but for our purpose I think we can settle on: "testing soundness of conclusions, systematic, accurate". We are not scientists in the sense of people in white dustcoats examining solutions in test tubes or working on some enormous machine for smashing particles in Chicago University (althougn one student SPGBer is, at the time of writing, doing just that -not that particles have ever done him any harm, to my knowledge) . The journal. the Scientific American, is usually associated with the laboratory type of scientist, but their liberal application of the term "scientific" enables them to discuss in their columns such things as The Professionalization of the U.S. Labour Force, this being the title of an article in their issue of March, 1979, which we in turn think worth discussing 'here.


The sub-heading of the article reads: "The increased number of college graduates in the U.S. has altered the composition of its work force. Professionals and managers now hold one out of four of the nation's jobs." The first reaction that occurred to the present writer was - so what? (And the second, too.) The revelation seems to be one of quite monumental unimportance. But the journal is a famous and rather important one, while the article itself consists of thousands of words of closely printed type spread over five pages, so one steels oneself to read it - and write about it. But perhaps I am being a little uncharitable and it may well be that a quote like the following is worth noting:


"Managers and administrators provide the most comprehensive count of the population of college graduates, granted that some college graduates are also found in Iower-ranking jobs among sales, clerical, blue-collar and even service workers. An economy once dominated by entrepeneurs and self'-employed professionals is now dependent on managers and professionals mainly employed on salary by large organizations, public and private."


To a socialist - one who looks at the society he Iives in with open eyes and an open mind (the only scientific way of doing things) this is,stating the obvious. How nice it would be if Eli Ginzberg would have gone on to say:


"This confirms the view that scientific socialists have been propounding for quite some time. Namely, that while in the early days of capitalism, the system was built up under the dynamic leadership of enterprising go-getters, today the running of society is done from top to bottom by wage-slaves. High-paid wage-slaves. And low-paid wage slaves. Some who have been to college. Some who have hardly been educated at all, Some of them highly intellectual. Some who can only be described as thick. (It would make another nice thesis for Ginsberg if he would research the problem whether the graduates are more thick than the others or not. I 'have certainly known professors who seemed far more obtuse than the average plumber or bricklayer."


So what use are the present day capitalitsts? By definition, no use at all. As the working class does it all, it follows that the capitalists are merely eaters of surplus value.


Not to undermine, but to overthrow

Let us have a look at some more quotes. Ginzberg tells us that many of these graduates,

"educated for six or seven years beyond high school ... have had time to learn to think critically: they do not automatically accept the values, goals and patterns of t!he society around them or of the organisations they [oin. It was economist Josep'h Schumpeter's perceptive insight that the enJistment of such people in the management of the capitalist system might ultimately undermine it."

It would be pleasant for socialists to think that this really was "perceptive insiglht" and that there was some real evidence that graduates were flocking to the banner of socialism (unless there is some other way of undermining capitalism which the scientists have not yet revealed). It rnight be better if Schumpeter stopped blowing his own schumpet and looked at the real world and not at his own insight. The sad fact is that graduates are proving just as slow in understanding the society in which they live and the need not to undermine it but to overthrow it - and it is quite unscientific to think that a professor is better equipped to understand the need to change our social. system than a slave of the conveyor belt. Socialtsm is in reality a quite straightforward proposition which should be readily undertandable by workers of all kinds. At present it is, consciously or otherwise , rejected by the great majority of them. Including the great majority of professors.

A little later on we are given the unsurprising information that the number of graduates in the workforce went up from 286,000 in 1955 to 900,000 in 1977 "and the vast majority of these went to swell t'he ranks of managers and professionals throughout the economy." But in the same paragraph we are told that "college graduates make up nearly a fourth of the total labour force." I fancy it is significant that the famous Scientific American can print stuff which would not be allowed in the unfamous Western Socialist or Socialist Standard. Ginzberg then goes on to show how the "professional" segment of the workforce is made up. It seems it is not only composed of scientists, professors, lawyers, etc., but it also includes over a million in the category 'writers, artists and entertainers." To which one can only suggest that if the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or Jane Fonda or Vanessa Redgrave are (a) scientists or (b) underminers of capitalism, it's all news to' me. And while we are dealing with the changing face of the working class, it is notable that the Scientific American felt it necessary to illustrate this aspect by taking up two large chunks of expensive space with cartoon drawings of bodies of workers in first the 1940s and second the 1970s. The workers shuffling past the payoffice window are what in England are called cloth-capped types and in U.S. blue-collars (pity the thing wasn't in colour) - in drawing number one. And in drawing number two, we see nattily dressed professionals all looking very intellectual as they engage in important discussion (presumably about how to increase the profits which their masters steal from the working olass Including thernselves) . The inference is that the. scientific readers of the journal couldn't manage to absorb a few simple facts without the help of drawings which would really fit quite nicely into a comic for ten-year-olds.


Ginsberg just manages to include the odd phrase, in passing, which says more than all the shower of uninteresting statistics (thoug'h he clearly doesn't appreciate that himself).

"There are signs now that the growth of these occupations having arrived at one out of four in the labour force, may be slowing down. It is significant that the ranks of the professoriate appear to have closed, that newly-rninted PhDs, even in the sciences, have great difficulty in finding good academic appointments. The Federal Government has throttled down for more than a decade the increase in its outlays for university science ..."


Well, how interesting. It means, in the simple language that socialists have been using for many decades now, that members of the working class of all types are subject to the great law of capitalism: if it is not profitable to produce goods - food, clothes, steel, homes - then production wiJl be. throtted down, no matter how many millions of human beings are hungry, If it is not profitable to employ wage slaves - dustmen or professors or computer engineers - then tbey will join the ranks of the unemployed with all the misery that is involved. As Ginzberg says, this is "significant." What a pity that the real signifance is the real necessity, is a socialist revolution."

'The Unscientific American', L. E. Weidberg (SPGB), The Western Socialist, Fall - 1979