Had an argument where someone tried to tell me historical materialism is “necessarily true” and therefore not scientific or useful. Only response I can think of is that dialectical materialism is a philosophical framework, and isn’t subject to the same rules of falsification as a hypothesis. It feels somehow unsatisfying.
Have any of you encountered this argument before? What do you say to it?
Its worth noting that there are debates within Marxism stressing science, empiricism, and materialism over its philosopical hegelian idealist roots.
There are certainly lots of assertions in Marxism that are testable and scientific. Dialectics? Probably not. Historical materialism ( ie a lens of viewing history through changes in modes of production and technology affecting social structures ), definitely.
Bonus removedshott video: mechanical vs dialectical materialism.
As others have said, one of the main proponents of the idea that dialectical materialism is unfalsifiable is Karl Popper. Much of his critique of Marxism can be found in The Poverty of Historicism, The Open Society and its Enemies, vols 1 & 2, and Conjectures and Refutations (CR, in the quote, below).
In The Open Philosophy and the Open Society: A Reply to Sir Karl Popper’s Refutations of Marxism, Maurice Cornforth unravels Popper like Engels does Herr Dühring. There is room for us to read the text critically as Marxists, but Popper never stood a chance. Cornforth even takes the chance in the Index to take a shot at Popper, listing him under ‘Popper, Professor Doctor Sir Karl’, as if to say, ‘even with all those titles’.
Cornforth’s three-book series Dialectical Materialism: An Introduction is also good (Vol 1: Materialism and the Dialectical Method; Vol 2: Historical Materialism; and Vol 3: Theory of Knowledge). PDFs of all four books are available if you search for them.
Anyway, on to the substance. This is a cleaned up quote from the PDF. Apologies for errors. I’ll fix them if I spot them. I’ll split the quote over a couple of comments to make it easier to read.
1/3:
“I. The Scientific Character of Marxism
…
“2. Is Marxism Falsifiable?
“In his writings on scientific method Dr. Popper dealt with the question of the criterion of demarcation between scientific theories, on the one hand, and non-scientific (pseudo-scientific or metaphysical) theories on the other. It is generally agreed that a theory is scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. He pointed out that to be capable of being tested is to be capable of being falsified. Thus it is not enough to be able to describe types of instances which would confirm a theory; it is necessary to be able to describe what sort of instance would falsify it. “The criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability” (CR. 37).
“This point, a valid and important one, can be appreciated by reflecting that to test anything it is essential to have a criterion of failure. If there is only a vague idea of what is required to pass the test, but no clear idea of what will bring failure, then it is possible to wangle almost anything past the test and the test is as good as worthless. Or if the test is so devised that anything will pass it, then it is no test at all. This, Dr. Popper insists, goes for scientific theories. “It is easy to obtain confirmations for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or refute it. Testability is falsifiability” (CR. 36).
“It is quite possible, as he and others have pointed out, for certain ingenious theories to masquerade under the title of science when they are in fact non-scientific—since they have been so constructed as to be incapable of falsification. They are so constructed that whatever happens fits in with the theory, and nothing, therefore, can falsify it.
“It has been suggested that certain Freudian theories may be of this sort. Freud said that every man wishes to kill his father and marry his mother. If a man objects that he does not in fact wish to do such things, Freud replies that of course he is not aware of so wishing because the wish has been repressed. And in general, whatever a man consciously wishes and does, it can always be made out to be linked with and not incompatible with his unconscious oedipus-complex. But this puts the Freudian theory outside the bounds of science. It is not a scientific but a pseudo-scientific theory. It is a “reinforced dogmatism”, so built up or reinforced as to be unfalsifiable or irrefutable.
“These considerations suggested to Dr. Popper the happy idea of contriving a final refutation of Marxism. People had long been trying in vain to cite facts which would refute Marx’s social theories. No wonder they did not succeed, for these theories are so devised as to be irrefutable—and that refutes them!
“If Marxist social theories were irrefutable in this sense, then they would indeed be unscientific. But the fact that a theory has not been falsified does not imply that it is unscientific because unfalsifiable. For example, the law of the conservation of energy (the first law of thermodynamics) is generally regarded as a genuine and well-tested scientific law; but it has not been falsified. We can quite well say what sort of things could happen if the law of the conservation of energy did not hold; the point is, it does hold and they do not happen. Similarly, we can quite well say what sort of things could happen if the basic laws formulated by Marx as governing social development did not hold; the point is, they do hold, and these things do not happen. Unhappily for the refutation, Marxism is not irrefutable. Its basic laws, like those of thermodynamics, correspond with how things in fact go. What they forbid to happen never does happen.”
EDIT: Structure
2/3:
“Dr. Popper says, with truth, that “every ‘good’ scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen” (CR. 36). Thus a “good” or “genuine” scientific law, as distinct from a pseudo-scientific one, can always be expressed in the form: “So and so cannot happen.” For example, the first law of thermodynamics tells us “You cannot build perpetual motion machines”, and the second law tells us “You cannot build machines that are one hundred per cent efficient”. This way of expressing laws brings out very well their practical value. Thus the laws of thermodynamics instruct machine-technologists about the limits of practical possibility within which they can operate (indeed, it was in connection with the construction of steam engines that these laws were first discovered). An engine cannot run without fuel, and the task of the designer is to construct an engine in which the energy of the fuel will be most efficiently converted into work. That allows a very large but not unlimited range of possibility for the construction of engines. But, of course, if someone did contrive an engine which ran without fuel, or which was one hundred per cent efficient (it would be a kind of fairy-tale engine), that would falsify the laws of thermodynamics—and technologists would have to undertake some new and very fundamental rethinking of their concepts. No one expects this to happen, but it is imaginable (i.e. it can be described in fairy tales). The laws of thermodynamics are thus falsifiable but not falsified. That is, no doubt, why they are considered to be such very “good” laws.
“The fundamental laws which Marx formulated as governing social development similarly “forbid certain things to happen”. They say that there must always be a certain kind of correspondence between forces of production and relations of production. This allows all manner of things to be done within the bounds of such correspondence, but denies the possibility of going outside those bounds. From the point of view, therefore, of social action—or what Dr. Popper calls “social engineering”—it says what is possible and what is not possible. For example, to use all the resources of modern technology for human welfare is possible, but not without reconstituting property relations in correspondence with the social character of production—it is not possible to combine such use of resources with capitalist ownership and capitalist profit. What Marxism “forbids to happen” can be imagined as happening—indeed, in many democratic countries the principal political parties make a parade of such imaginings at every general election; but it never happens. If uninterrupted economic development were to be combined with capitalist enterprise and capitalist profit, then Marx’s theory would be falsified—just as if a perpetual motion machine were built the laws of thermodynamics would be falsified.
“The “social engineering” which treats Marxism as reinforced dogmatism is thus just about on a level with ordinary engineering which treats the laws of thermodynamics as reinforced dogmatism. Dr. Popper maintains that the true scientist, always eager to test his theories in every conceivable way, devotes his main energies to trying to contrive falsifications. This view of scientific work overlooks the fact that a scientific attitude also demands the guidance of practical undertakings in accordance with scientific discovery. Dr. Popper seems to think that a scientific attitude towards the social discoveries claimed by Marx would enjoin continually trying all manner of means to go against the laws which Marx formulated, in the hopes of falsifying them. The scientifically-minded person must try to preserve capitalism so as to see whether Marx’s laws cannot be falsified. The Marxist who, accepting the laws, advises the abolition of capitalism, is a mere dogmatist and lacks any conception of the ways of science. This is like saying that chemists should practise alchemy, in the hopes of falsifying the laws of chemistry; and that engineers should devote all their ingenuity to constructing perpetual motion machines.
“But Dr. Popper formulates his objection to Marxism also along the following lines. Marxism forbids certain things to happen, but nevertheless some things which it forbids do happen. In that case the Marxists admit to having made a mistake, but say that, all the same, “the fundamentals” of the theory have not been falsified. That shows, says Dr. Popper, that the theory is nothing but a reinforced dogmatism. It has formulated its “fundamentals” in such a way that they cannot be falsified. It is not a scientific theory, which submits itself to tests, but an unscientific theory which evades every test.
“The Russian Revolution has been alleged, by Dr. Popper and others, to provide a case in point. Marx certainly said at one time that the socialist revolution would begin in the most advanced industrial countries. He “forbade” it to begin anywhere else—but in fact it began in Russia. But when this falsification of an earlier prediction (or prohibition, for every prediction is a prohibition) took place, Marxists simply said that certain specific features of social development in particular countries had been underestimated; the revolution began in Russia because “the chain breaks at its weakest link”.”
3/3:
“Does a candid examination of this example really support the allegation that Marxism is reinforced dogmatism? On the contrary, Marxism remains falsifiable. Marxists can, it is true, readily account for the socialist revolution starting in Russia. But if it had started, say, in the Far East or Central Africa, or if it had never started at all, that could not have been accounted for, and really would have falsified Marxism. But it did start, and started where Marxism permitted it to start. In point of fact Marx himself, in his later correspondence, wrote that his observations were leading him to the conclusion that revolution was unlikely after all to start in the industrial countries. Things were happening in these countries to postpone the revolution he had earlier expected, but in Russia to accelerate it. His approach to questions was the normal one of a scientific thinker who is continually ready to revise former estimates in the light of new evidence, but does not find it necessary to scrap the whole fundamental theory of his science every time such a revision is indicated.
“Similarly the fact that after the Second World War there was for many years full employment in Britain, in contradiction to Marx’s statements about capitalism always creating “a reserve” of unemployment, does not lead British Marxists to conclude that the whole Marxist theory of capitalism and socialism has been falsified, but only that certain special conditions had temporarily come into existence in Britain.[*]
“Scientists generally agree that if predictions made in the light of a general theory are falsified, and it is then proposed to “save” the theory by adding “supplementary hypotheses”, the theory must none the less be scrapped if the only evidence offered for the supplementary hypotheses is that they save the theory. Thus, for example, the old Ptolemaic theory that the planets move in circular orbits round the earth failed to accord with observations, but was “saved” by postulating irregularities, or epicycles, in the motions of the planets. However, because the only evidence offered for these epicycles was that they saved the theory, scientists now generally agree that observation has falsified the Ptolemaic theory.
“It has been suggested that this is how Marxism is “saved” whenever what happens deviates from a prediction. But in fact the Marxist procedure has never been to invent supplementary hypotheses. For example, to account for full employment in Britain we do not invent a supplementary hypothesis—a kind of economic epicycle. We simply examine what has actually happened, which has by no means exceeded the bounds of possibility allowed by the general theory of Marxism, and find that it has led to consequences predictable and accountable within the theory. And similarly with the Russian Revolution.
“The rescue of Marxism in such cases is interestingly paralleled by a second example from the theory of planetary motions. After the Ptolemaic theory had been supplanted by Kepler’s laws, certain irregularities were observed in the motion of the planet Uranus which did not accord with the predictions made by the laws. So it was suggested that there was in fact another planet, whose existence had previously passed unnoticed, the influence of which would account for the irregularities. Sure enough, this other planet (now named Neptune) was observed when telescopes were directed in the right direction—so Kepler’s laws were “saved”, since they did not “forbid” there being another planet but allowed for its existence. It is just the same with Marxism, when social “irregularities” (such as the Russian Revolution or full employment in Britain) take place—we look for and find the causes of these “irregularities”.”
[*] I added this footnote to point out a Marxist response to this problem. Kwame Nkrumah argues that capitalist powers managed to export their internal contradictions to their colonies (See Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism). So on a global scale, Marx was still right, capitalism continued to need and create a reserve army of labour even after WWII. But that workforce was largely located outside of Britain. Moreover, we now know that technology (e.g. automated tills at supermarkets) has coincided with higher unemployment, and that the low unemployment in post-war Britain was short-lived. So the post-war data viewed from within Britain did not refute Marx’s general theory. The Brits simply ignored or lacked relevant data. You may like to follow up this section with ‘4. Does Marxism Allow Logical Contradictions’ in the same Cornforth chapter, as people who claim that Marxism is not falsifiable tend also to believe that dialectical contradiction means that Marxism accepts logical contradictions.
Dialectical materialism is a model for a particular relationship that exists between certain subjects of the natural and social sciences. It is not falsifiable in the sense that mathematical definitions are not falsifiable - you just cannot encounter a circle containing two points that are not equidistant from its centre. But though cannot falsify dialectical materialism itself, you can enquire whether different entities have a dialectical relationship among each other. If that is the case, you can predict, with some degree of certainty, their future co-evolution. If the prediction turns out to be false, well, then that relationship likely wasn’t subject to dialectical materialism.
If you want an analogy, think of the circle again. Despite no scientific inquiry being possible over whether perfect circles actually exist anywhere in nature, they have proven useful for modelling physical objects. By assuming them as circles, we can come to conclusions that are very useful and workable, almost bafflingly so. If an object that we have previously modelled as a circle later turns out to exhibit properties we did not expect, like planetary orbits, then it is likely not a circle, but rather from a broader, related class of shapes - ellipses. However, the geometric theory we derived about circles still holds, it is just this particular object that has an issue being modelled as one.
