Rand and Marx

[Mise]

You not clear on what the word 'directly' means?

Or how the hell he came up with "hundreds of millions" of deaths. "Tens of millions", maybe...

 

[RedRalph]

Or how the hell he came up with "hundreds of millions" of deaths. "Tens of millions", maybe...

Or even 'caused' for that matter, but I thought it better to stick to one objection...

 

[Ajidica]

Marx has directly caused hundreds of millions of deaths. I am not sure if that is a plus or a minus given the question asked in the OP.

I wasn't aware Marx had been reborn in a giant robot suit that crushed people beneath its massive foot as he strode across Europe.

History has demonstrated for us that dictators will kill people regardless of the dictators personal beliefs. Pinochet, hardly a Marxist, but still responsible for the deaths of 10,000. The same goes for the right-wing military junta in Argentina with Los Desaprecidos and the Dirty War. Unless if you are willing to say Freidman is directly responsible for those tortured and murdered by during Pinochet's military dictatorship, I would advise you to rethink your statement.

 

[BvBPL]

I think you focused on that sentence and neglected to pay close attention to the rest of the post, which can tell you what I meant. When people say something is scientific or unscienfitic around here, they tend not to include the social sciences in the former. But, as you can see from a later post of mine, I do know that sociology uses scientific methods. The oft-cited main distinction between 'science' and 'social science' is the Popperian criteria. That's what I had in mind in that post.

You’re half right. I did focus on that sentence, but I also took into account the rest of the paragraph. You talk about how difficult it is to develop natural laws in the social sciences, and how the dialectic method may be of better use as a means to discuss social behavior. The problem I have with your statement is that the dialectic method and the scientific method aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have both in the same discipline with both disciplines providing value. The benefit of a dialectic discussion doesn’t invalidate the scientific elements. I think you can make the case that Marx’s form of social science, because it relies upon the dialectic, is not scientific, but that doesn’t mean that subsequent social scientists who do use the scientific method aren’t using science.

Social science is perfectly capable of describing social behaviour. It is just mostly incapable of formulating (scientific) laws in its domain.

You are wrong. The example cited above, that one’s father’s level of education is a predictor of the respondent’s own level of education as an adult is, basically, a formulaic law. The General Social Survey proves that time and time again. Furthermore, the lack of a finding a formulaic law in any given study doesn’t invalidate the science of that study. For example, astronomers have recently found that the universe is expanding and is likely to continue to expand. This runs contrary to the previously popular Big Crunch theory which stated that as the universe cools and slows it would eventually collapse upon itself. However, the astronomers do not know the source or nature of the energy that is causing the universe to expand so they can’t develop a formulaic law that describes what is causing this expansion. That doesn’t make the studies that have discovered the expansion of the universe any less scientific though.

You do qualify your statement by saying “[Sociology] It is just mostly incapable of formulating (scientific) laws in its domain.” (my emphasis) Stating that the ability of a discipline to develop formulaic laws better than half the time is a determinate of whether or not something is science just muddies the waters. Visual art has formulaic laws that apply most of the time too, as does music, but people wouldn’t call those sciences.

 

[Formaldehyde]

There is quite a difference between the "hard sciences" and the "soft sciences". While some sociologists, economists, psychologists, and others in the latter domain use a form of the scientific method to at least a limited extent, in the vast majority of cases it is hardly as rigorous and pervasive as it is in the "hard sciences". In that sense, they are indeed "pseudo-sciences" and they likely always will be. The moniker "science" is frequently used as an attempt to bestow credibility to this work which is really not justified.

But we have discussed this difference numerous times in the past, and we will likely discuss it numerous times in the future...

 

[BvBPL]

While some sociologists, economists, psychologists, and others in the latter domain use a form of the scientific method to at least a limited extent, in the vast majority of cases it is hardly as rigorous and pervasive as it is in the "hard sciences".

You've made your hypothesis, now I encourage you to prove it via a review of social science journals. I believe you will find that most studies published in peer reviewed social science journals, indeed nearly all, do use the scientific method.

 

[Quackers]

Is there any fundamental model of sociology like in physics?

 

[_random_]

Did you watch the version that had Queen in it?

Wait. What's this? All I've seen is the version with the trippy techno. That sounds much more awesome.

 

[Formaldehyde]

You've made your hypothesis, now I encourage you to prove it via a review of social science journals. I believe you will find that most studies published in peer reviewed social science journals, indeed nearly all, do use the scientific method.

Perhaps you can provide a few cases of experimentation to test the hypotheses which would pass the muster of those required by the hard sciences outside of some psychological behaviorists. And even so, it is certainly not required for all branches of that discipline. Take clinical psychology, for instance.

 

[aelf]

You’re half right. I did focus on that sentence, but I also took into account the rest of the paragraph. You talk about how difficult it is to develop natural laws in the social sciences, and how the dialectic method may be of better use as a means to discuss social behavior. The problem I have with your statement is that the dialectic method and the scientific method aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have both in the same discipline with both disciplines providing value. The benefit of a dialectic discussion doesn’t invalidate the scientific elements. I think you can make the case that Marx’s form of social science, because it relies upon the dialectic, is not scientific, but that doesn’t mean that subsequent social scientists who do use the scientific method aren’t using science.

I think dialectics is a method of social analysis and critique. If I may say so, I think it 'transcends' science, in the sense that it is outside the latter and is not negated by it. I think scientific methods in social science are primarily limited to the function of data-gathering. Data can be determined to be accurate or inaccurate. After collecting the data, however, you need to interpret it in order for it to be useful to social science, and this is where non-scientific methods come in. Frequently there's no way to 'prove' the correctness of your analysis other than by referring back to the data and citing other people, which leads to a somewhat circular process of reasoning. That doesn't mean that what you say isn't true or insightful. It just means that you cannot attribute a scientific kind of certainty to your theory.

You are wrong. The example cited above, that one’s father’s level of education is a predictor of the respondent’s own level of education as an adult is, basically, a formulaic law. The General Social Survey proves that time and time again. Furthermore, the lack of a finding a formulaic law in any given study doesn’t invalidate the science of that study. For example, astronomers have recently found that the universe is expanding and is likely to continue to expand. This runs contrary to the previously popular Big Crunch theory which stated that as the universe cools and slows it would eventually collapse upon itself. However, the astronomers do not know the source or nature of the energy that is causing the universe to expand so they can’t develop a formulaic law that describes what is causing this expansion. That doesn’t make the studies that have discovered the expansion of the universe any less scientific though.

You do qualify your statement by saying “[Sociology] It is just mostly incapable of formulating (scientific) laws in its domain.” (my emphasis) Stating that the ability of a discipline to develop formulaic laws better than half the time is a determinate of whether or not something is science just muddies the waters. Visual art has formulaic laws that apply most of the time too, as does music, but people wouldn’t call those sciences.

You're missing the crucial bits again. Laws of science, as I quite clearly indicated, were what I was referring to. Given how predisposed people are to treating 'laws' in a scientific (i.e. universal and invariable) manner, I'm merely stepping carefully around the term. The 'laws' you cited are not universal and invariable. They may generally be correct and even describe long-lasting social tendencies. But it's either that there are too many exceptions to them, or that they are really quite variable depending on the context of the studies in which they are formulated. For example, in some societies as compared to others, the father's level of education may not be as accurate a predictor of a child's level of education or is somewhat accurate in one direction but not in the other.

The kind of changes in scientific theories that you describe, on the other hand, are a result of changes in the way people understand the physical universe. It's not that the laws of the physical universe itself change over time or that people's understanding of its workings can affect how it works (social science research is both interpretive and constitutive). In social science, these phenomena are fairly commonplace.

 

[BvBPL]

Perhaps you can provide a few cases of experimentation to test the hypotheses which would pass the muster of those required by the hard sciences outside of some psychological behaviorists.

Athletics as a Source for Social Status among Youth by Shakib, Veliz, Dunbar, & Sabo. Sociology of Sport Journal, Sept 2011

Alcohol and Marijuana Use among American High School Seniors, by Denham. Sociology of Sport Journal, Sept 2011

High School Students’ Attitudes Toward Providing Girls Opportunities to Participate in Sport by Brown, Ruel, & Medley-Rath. Sociology of Sport Journal, June 2011

All attached.

 

[Formaldehyde]

None of these would be considered to be reasonable hypotheses or adequate experimentation by the hard sciences.

 

[BvBPL]

Hypothesis 2a: Athletes will have a higher self-perceived social status than non-athletes.

How is that not a reasonable hypothesis? What, in your mind, constitutes a “reasonable hypothesis”?

You're missing the crucial bits again. Laws of science, as I quite clearly indicated, were what I was referring to.

Okay, now I see where you are coming from. However, whether or not one is capable of determining inviolate laws of behavior is not the determination of whether or not something is a science. The basis of science is the use of the scientific method as a means to test hypotheses; whether or not such testing results in laws is irrelevant to the scientific nature of a discipline.

 

[BvBPL]

Double post.

 

[aelf]

Okay, now I see where you are coming from. However, whether or not one is capable of determining inviolate laws of behavior is not the determination of whether or not something is a science. The basis of science is the use of the scientific method as a means to test hypotheses; whether or not such testing results in laws is irrelevant to the scientific nature of a discipline.

Well, I'm not going to insist on one definition of science. I'm just navigating around the discourse that exists here (and elsewhere), which holds sciences to a certain kind of exacting standards. Are you familiar with Karl Popper? He argued that science must be falsifiable and that, while no number of affirmative experimental outcomes can confirm a theory, a single outcome that counters it can be crucial, the latter which leads some people to attack certain social theories (like Marxist ones) as false or wrong because they have apparently predicted wrong outcomes. It's against such objections that I'm positioning my arguments about the function of social science as something that makes contextual (as opposed to universal) claims and is, in a certain sense, innately historical and period-bound.

 

[BvBPL]

I think we will probably have to agree to disagree. Our definitions of what constitutes science may differ too much to reach a common ground. Two points I’d like to close with:

I’ve been arguing that social science is a science, but I don’t necessarily extend that distinction to Marx’s work. While Marx did help to lay the foundation for social sciences as we know them today, his work (as you point out) was somewhat non-scientific. I do not think this invalidates his work as a sociologist. However, you cannot suggest that simply because Marx was not scientific that the social sciences as a whole are not scientific. That would be like dismissing modern physicists because people in antiquity attempted to explain the physical nature of the universe without the use of the scientific method. (Again, my definition of what is and is not scientific revolves primarily around the use of the scientific method as a means of gathering knowledge.)

The second point is that social science, and sociology in particular, is not, in general, interested in explaining or predicting the behaviors of individuals as much as it is interested in the greater aggregate social mass. As such, a social scientist may predict that X% of a population are going to face thus and such a circumstance. The social science skeptic may point to an individual in the population and say “a ha, this person did not face thus and such a circumstance” as a means to invalidate the social scientist. The problem with this is that the skeptic is basing his determination of the validity of the scientist upon the review of the individual in a population whereas the scientist is making a determination based on the whole of the population. The variant result may be a member of the 100-X% that the scientist excluded from his findings.

This is an issue that comes up more and more frequently as systems become more and more complex. For example, if I eat an apple a biologist could tell me that X% of the apple’s mass will be absorbed by my body and Y% will pass through as waste matter. However, if I have a stomach bug or similarly vary from the norm in some manner then the biologist’s findings will be inaccurate for my particular circumstance. This variance does not invalidate the reasoning behind how much of the mass is absorbed by my body versus how much is excreted. My deviation from the norm doesn’t prove anything other than that elements within complex systems are more likely to demonstrate deviation than elements in simple systems. It doesn’t disprove the theory that X% of a mass of an apple is absorbed by a body, but if multiple individuals varied from expected norm then the theory could be in doubt.

 

[aelf]

However, you cannot suggest that simply because Marx was not scientific that the social sciences as a whole are not scientific. That would be like dismissing modern physicists because people in antiquity attempted to explain the physical nature of the universe without the use of the scientific method. (Again, my definition of what is and is not scientific revolves primarily around the use of the scientific method as a means of gathering knowledge.)

It's not just Marx or Marxist theories that are not strictly scientific. But, in any case, if you're arguing that the fact that it's not purely scientific doesn't make social science unscientific, I don't disagree entirely. But that's why people are inclined to call it 'pseudo-science' and not simply unscientific.

The second point is that social science, and sociology in particular, is not, in general, interested in explaining or predicting the behaviors of individuals as much as it is interested in the greater aggregate social mass. As such, a social scientist may predict that X% of a population are going to face thus and such a circumstance. The social science skeptic may point to an individual in the population and say “a ha, this person did not face thus and such a circumstance” as a means to invalidate the social scientist. The problem with this is that the skeptic is basing his determination of the validity of the scientist upon the review of the individual in a population whereas the scientist is making a determination based on the whole of the population. The variant result may be a member of the 100-X% that the scientist excluded from his findings.

This is an issue that comes up more and more frequently as systems become more and more complex. For example, if I eat an apple a biologist could tell me that X% of the apple’s mass will be absorbed by my body and Y% will pass through as waste matter. However, if I have a stomach bug or similarly vary from the norm in some manner then the biologist’s findings will be inaccurate for my particular circumstance. This variance does not invalidate the reasoning behind how much of the mass is absorbed by my body versus how much is excreted. My deviation from the norm doesn’t prove anything other than that elements within complex systems are more likely to demonstrate deviation than elements in simple systems. It doesn’t disprove the theory that X% of a mass of an apple is absorbed by a body, but if multiple individuals varied from expected norm then the theory could be in doubt.

I was thinking more of the utter dependence of social science on context that is not constant, which is on a somewhat different note from the point about statistical certitude that you seem to be making. The point is you can't really abstract from context in social sciences because the context is everything (there's nothing outside the context and all that), without which all you'd get are very simplified models that would prove to be very difficult to apply to what is ultimately the object of your study - human society in all its different forms. The context of a study frames it and leads to theories that are quite particular to the context. As I suggested earlier, you may come up with a rule regarding predicting a child's educational level based on its father's, but it's quite likely that the rule would not hold in another context, such as in another society or perhaps in the same society but in different times. Perhaps the same can be said of the natural sciences as well, I'm not sure, but that would be on a vastly different scale, which is significant.

 

[Traitorfish]

Also, wages are falling to the subsistence level, and when they do communist revolution will ensue. Seriously ???? But also, profits are falling in the long run. So, bot wages and profits are falling in the long run. No, I mean SERIOUSLY ??????????????)

When did Marx say anything of this sort? That sounds more like the Iron Law of Wages, which Marx rejected explicitly in the Critique of the Gothic Program on account of it being, y'know, self-evident nonsense.

 

[Hygro]

but falling profitability from increased competition does lead to decreased wages, decreased demand, and further declining profitability.

 

[Alassius]

When did Marx say anything of this sort? That sounds more like the Iron Law of Wages, which Marx rejected explicitly in the Critique of the Gothic Program on account of it being, y'know, self-evident nonsense.

Minimum wages was the one topic Marx repeatedly wrote on, in depth, as opposite to, you know, how communism would work. I'm surprised that you could have missed it.


In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Wages of Labour, Marx said:

The lowest and the only necessary wage rate is that providing for the subsistence of the worker for the duration of his work and as much more as is necessary for him to support a family and for the race of labourers not to die out. The ordinary wage, according to Smith, is the lowest compatible with common humanity, that is, with cattle-like existence.

...

The raising of wages excites in the worker the capitalist’s mania to get rich, which he, however, can only satisfy by the sacrifice of his mind and body. The raising of wages presupposes and entails the accumulation of capital, and thus sets the product of labour against the worker as something ever more alien to him. Similarly, the division of labour renders him ever more one-sided and dependent, bringing with it the competition not only of men but also of machines. Since the worker has sunk to the level of a machine, he can be confronted by the machine as a competitor. Finally, as the amassing of capital increases the amount of industry and therefore the number of workers, it causes the same amount of industry to manufacture a larger amount of products, which leads to over-production and thus either ends by throwing a large section of workers out of work or by reducing their wages to the most miserable minimum.

In Wage Labour and Capital, 1847:

What, then, is the cost of production of labour-power?

It is the cost required for the maintenance of the labourer as a labourer, and for his education and training as a labourer.

Therefore, the shorter the time required for training up to a particular sort of work, the smaller is the cost of production of the worker, the lower is the price of his labour-power, his wages. In those branches of industry in which hardly any period of apprenticeship is necessary and the mere bodily existence of the worker is sufficient, the cost of his production is limited almost exclusively to the commodities necessary for keeping him in working condition. The price of his work will therefore be determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence.

He in fact went further to suggest that the minimum wage can be even lower. As long as the proletarian class as a whole can produce enough workers, it's all right if some individuals receive less than that:

Here, however, there enters another consideration. The manufacturer who calculates his cost of production and, in accordance with it, the price of the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the instruments of labour. If a machine costs him, for example, 1,000 shillings, and this machine is used up in 10 years, he adds 100 shillings annually to the price of the commodities, in order to be able after 10 years to replace the worn-out machine with a new one. In the same manner, the cost of production of simple labour-power must include the cost of propagation, by means of which the race of workers is enabled to multiply itself, and to replace worn-out workers with new ones. The wear and tear of the worker, therefore, is calculated in the same manner as the wear and tear of the machine.
Thus, the cost of production of simple labour-power amounts to the cost of the existence and propagation of the worker. The price of this cost of existence and propagation constitutes wages. The wages thus determined are called the minimum of wages. This minimum wage, like the determination of the price of commodities in general by cost of production, does not hold good for the single individual, but only for the race. Individual workers, indeed, millions of workers, do not receive enough to be able to exist and to propagate themselves; but the wages of the whole working class adjust themselves, within the limits of their fluctuations, to this minimum.

In Wages, 1847:

3. Although the minimum wage is determined on average by the price of the most indispensable provisions, it is nevertheless to be remarked:
Firstly: that the minimum is different in different countries, the potato in Ireland, for example.
Secondly: not only that. The minimum itself has a historical movement and sinks always further towards the absolutely lowest level. Example of brandy. Distilled first from draff, then from grain, finally from spirits.

Then...

4. When wages have once fallen and later rise again, they never rise, however, to their previous level.

In the course of development, there is a double fall in wages:

Firstly: relative, in proportion to the development of general wealth.

Secondly: absolute, since the quantity of commodities which the worker receives in exchange becomes less and less.

In Speech On the Question of Free Trade, 1848:

Have not his wages always fallen in comparison with profit, and is it not clear that his social position has grown worse as compared with that of the capitalist? Besides which he loses more as a matter of fact.
So long as the price of corn was higher and wages were also higher, a small saving in the consumption of bread sufficed to procure him other enjoyments. But as soon as bread is very cheap, and wages are therefore very cheap, he can save almost nothing on bread for the purchase of other articles.

And later...

But do not imagine that the worker receives only this minimum wage, and still less that he always receives it.

No, according to this law, the working class will sometimes be more fortunate. It will sometimes receive something above the minimum, but this surplus will merely make up for the deficit which it will have received below the minimum in times of industrial stagnation. That is to say that, within a given time which recurs periodically, in the cycle which industry passes through while undergoing the vicissitudes of prosperity, overproduction, stagnation and crisis, when reckoning all that the working class will have had above and below necessaries, we shall see that, in all, it will have received neither more nor less than the minimum; i.e., the working class will have maintained itself as a class after enduring any amount of misery and misfortune, and after leaving many corpses upon the industrial battlefield. But what of that? The class will still exist; nay, more, it will have increased.

But this is not all. The progress of industry creates less expensive means of subsistence. Thus spirits have taken the place of beer, cotton that of wool and linen, and potatoes that of bread.

Thus, as means are constantly being found for the maintenance of labor on cheaper and more wretched food, the minimum of wages is constantly sinking. If these wages began by making the man work to live, they end by making him live the life of a machine. His existence has not other value than that of a simple productive force, and the capitalist treats him accordingly.

This law of commodity labor, of the minimum of wages, will be confirmed in proportion as the supposition of the economists, free-trade, becomes an actual fact. Thus, of two things one: either we must reject all political economy based on the assumption of free trade, or we must admit that under this free trade the whole severity of the economic laws will fall upon the workers.

And of course, in the Communist Manifesto:

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

Coming back the Critique of the Gotha Programme. I think you misunderstood Marx. He did not mean the Iron Law was invalid as applied to the capitalist mode of production. He meant it's not "iron", as in it's not an absolute truth, and it would not applies to some societies i.e. communism. He saw the Iron Law as a consequence of the wage system, so if you abolish the latter, the former "would disappear of itself." Lassalle was wrong not in that Iron Law was wrong, but in that he was attacking the wrong target, the Law itself. This is a very fine distinction common in Marx's attacks against other socialists of his time.