On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Carrol Cox <[email protected]> wrote: > Raghu: My understanding is that Marxism does not assign a lot of weight to > sociological explanations of events and phenomena. > > Marxism is not a TOE -- and individual Marxists might vary greatly on such > questions. Sociology, of course, is no more of a science than is economics > -- both being aspects of history. > > It seems to me that Raghu sees Marxism as a religion rather than as > materialist history. >
Marxism seems to be many things to different people. You say it is not a Theory of Everything. That's fair enough, but Marxism certainly does color a Marxist's view of things. Specifically among Marxists, there is definitely an emphasis - an over-emphasis in my opinion - on the class struggle aspect to all facets of reality. This, by definition, leads to an under-emphasis (again just my opinion) of other aspects, specifically in this case, cultural and sociological aspects. You say sociology is not a science. I have heard many Marxists claim that Marxism is a science. To me this is a puerile argument. What is and isn't a science is an intractable philosophical question. There are lots of subjects that fall into grey areas between science and pseudo-science - including parts of so-called hard sciences like physics. When someone says 'X is a science', I see it as a rhetorical attempt to claim the prestige and authority of science for one's own arguments. Conversely when someone says 'X is not a science', I see it as a content-free rhetorical disparagement of another's person's argument. I prefer to avoid such arguments. -raghu.
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