By way of an introduction

Part 1: Scientific Socialism and Social Science

By Anthony Boynton

If you are not very familiar with Marxism, this little essay might help you discover Marxism. If you are familiar with Marxism, this essay will tell you where we are coming from. In either case it is an introduction to Marx Redux.

We hope to contribute to the revival of Marxist theory with this blog, a revival that is now beginning on a world scale. Mat and I differ on many details, but have broad agreement on key points. Both of us think that it is possible to understand the world, and that understanding – “theory” – is the best guide for action.

The action we have in mind is socialist revolution.

Marx, or maybe Engels, coined the term “scientific socialism” to describe their version of socialism and to differentiate it from other varieties they deemed to be unscientific.

What I think they meant by this idea is that human society is just as much a part of the material universe as are chemical compounds, planetary motion, and cellular biology. Consequently human society is evolving along with the rest of the material universe, in ways that can be understood, and if understood anticipated.

Moreover, since human society is the aspect of the material universe most directly influenced and shaped by human actions, understanding and anticipation of the direction of change could, under the right circumstances, allow human society to shape its own destiny.

They were amazingly far-sighted. Ahead of their times in every sense.

Marx and Engels discerned that the evolutionary logic of 19th century capitalism pointed in the direction of change toward socialism and communism, but that direction was barred by the self-interest of the ruling classes of the time.

The evolutionary logic of human society could only move in its natural direction through class conflict, and social revolution. Marx, or maybe Engels, said class conflict was the motor force of history.

This, in brief, is what I understand as the notion of scientific socialism.

Marx and Engel’s revolutionary conclusions were based partly on their personal experience in 19th century European social and political struggles, and partly on their study of history, especially modern European history. Important instances for them were the Peasant Wars in Germany, the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, the American Civil War, and the Paris Commune.

And of course the way in which they approached their experience and the history they studied was framed by their Hegelian formation.

The Hegelian undercurrent in the thought of Marx and Engels is very important, because it explains how they were able to grasp the role of social conflicts, especially class conflicts, in bringing about the transformations of social structure which have been the key turning points in human history.

Here is what Engel’s says about Hegel’s system in Chapter One of Anti-Duhring

“This new German philosophy culminated in the Hegelian system. In this system — and herein is its great merit — for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this point of view the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgment-seat of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena.”