12 - Marx and Marxism

Summary

Karl Marx (1818–1883) absorbed and modified, but never rejected, a German intellectual tradition concerning knowledge and science. This tradition, of science as Wissenschaft, derives from idealist assumptions about language and truth that contrast with the empiricism of common English usage and of Anglo-American philosophies of science. Moreover, Marx’s concept of social science was explicitly political, as was his activity as a social scientist, in contrast to views that social science can be “above politics” or “balanced,” that the social scientist can be apolitical or at least neutral between competing political positions. Because of these differences, Marx and Marxism are frequently located as a “Marxist” section or alternative within the various disciplines that have come to constitute the social sciences since his time, although in specific national contexts the social sciences have sometimes been constituted largely within a Marxist frame of reference (e.g., in France) or against a notion of what is Marxist (e.g., in the United States). Yet it is also undeniable that Marxist social science, both substantively and methodologically, has had such a considerable influence on social science generally, and on philosophies of science overall, that the saying “we are all Marxists now” is almost a truism.

WISSENSCHAFT

In the German tradition, Wissenschaft refers to knowledge in the broadest sense, provided that it is conceptualized in a systematic way. Thus, the natural or physical sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the social or human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) do not necessarily form separate domains of knowledge derived through distinct methodologies, nor is philosophy strictly distinguished from science in terms of method or content.