Why do Marxists call their sophistry scientific?

>or anything but neoclassical
But that's wrong

>and that the USSR would have the first revolution completely flies in the face of Marx's "materialist" history of class struggle.
Marx explicitly wrote against this interpretation.

>russia was actually communism
what

The fact that it basically did not beet any of the definitions of communism except not being capitalism why lots of people say it wasn't real communism.

Confirmation bias by cultists.

>call yourself "science man"
>be cool

that's it.

Or there might be a dialogue like this:

>Hi Marx. Why ur ideology's name is "scientific materialism". I mean, why "scientific"
>Cuz we're so scientific.
>k.

My guess is that Marx wanted to differentiate himself from those radical agrarian socialists who hated science and technology.

There is a lot of dispute amongst the marxist scholarship about precisely how to understand Marx on these points.

I think a more fruitful interpretation is to suggest that Marx thought we should analyse individuals in terms of the social relations they are actually situated under. These social relations however are not themselves psychological states of those individuals but the real activities those individuals have to engage in order to maintain the current mode of production in their society. In other words if we are in small primitive community and one of things we need is fish I may take up that role which consists of various activities, primarily fishing. I am understood as fishermen, but also labourer and producer. Further still depending on how the fish I "produce" is utilised I might be a wage labourer (if I fish not for the fish but for a wage) or serf (if some portion of my fish is taken as tithe).

Again it is important to stress these social relations themselves, whilst the product of conscious agents are not themselves "ideas" in those agents heads. They are fundamentally practices. This is also I believe how we are to understand what Marx means by the term "material" over "ideal". These social relations can exist quite independently of our ideas about them. Our ideas are only relevant only when they spur us on to change the social relations, that is the practices.

On the point about dialectics, there is a lot of vague woo-ey stuff that gets bandied around sometimes. I minimally interpret Marx that when talks about society being dialectical he means that reproduction of certain kinds of social relations (if we recall certain practices or activities, in others the re-performing of those activities) the result of those activities can lay down conditions that can obstruct further reproduction.

In the case of capitalism, for capitalists to keep expanding industry they need to increase the social productive powers of the working class. But in doing so they empower the working class to take direct control of the system of production by making them smarter, more in charge, more tightly coordinated with each other on a global scale etc. This therefore results in capitalism constantly having to hobble the working class and consequently itself on to prevent it succumbing to revolution.

Commieism in it's middle stages is still commieism

This is a religion.

"How do we interpret Marx..."
"Marx said [...] but that didn't happen, perhaps he was being allegorical?"

How long will this religion last? Who are its current priests?

When we are working out the philosophical fundamentals of how to scientifically study some new area (society in Marx's case) we must consult the thinker and their ideas. That means we have to do some old fashioned scholarly work of trying to figure out what they actually said and meant. The problem is that no matter how hard we try we can still be ambiguous in our use of words. Worse still people's own assumptions can obstruct them from understanding the material. They can substitute their interpretation for what the thinker actually states.

This isn't religious dogma this just the necessities of doing any serious study well. If for example I bastardised an understanding of your favourite economic thinker because of some ambiguity in their writing you would argue with about my interpretation of what was said. You might say "that intepretation can't be right because it would entirely inconsistent with some other thing they said" and on matter of the principal of charity we do not assume the thinker was being inconsistent but rather interpret in manner that is consistent. Of course this depends if we can find no way to interpret them consistently then we might consider the possibility they were inconsistent after all. Suffice to say no one has said anything on my understanding that points to Marx being obviously inconsistent.

I suppose I should also add that there are perfectly consistent explanations for what happened in the USSR on a materialist basis (Trotsky's writings are still very helpful). Furthermore it is right to say that Russia was backwards (though how any makes this assessment without making reference to the backward "material conditions" is beyond me). But the bolsheviks were well aware of this and a great deal of their theoretical efforts was to consider how to incorporate the peasantry in a socialist program, what a socialist program is more in the interests of wage labourers and not small property owners.

Oh an a final point for now, Marx never really argued for the inevitability of socialism. He was clear it must be "overthrown" and Marxists post Marx himself have famously stated "socialism or barbarism. The point being that unless the working class rise up capitalism could destroy us. That being said of course one might think that if capitalism severely impoverishes the working class en masse then the working class might take their exploitation more urgently and rise up. The problem is of course is that capitalism develops unevenly thus the working class of the first world have prospered under capitalism at the expense of the third world. Dividing the working class along national lines. Again Marx and later marxists were well aware of this and incorporated into their theory. Read Lenin on imperialism or look up the concept of "labour aristocracy".

I live in amarica and in amarica we were told that commies are evil... thats why we napalmed the heck out of them and it was justified. The same reason we supported afgam rebels against the soviets because its bad the communisamisn.. but since we promoted the god given democrazy we have the moral privalage to fight afgan rebels in the name of democracy and if you dont like that then leave america my white ancectors sacrafied a ton builsing this country not muslims, not natives, not chinese, not mexicans. Our founding father in the name of lord granted us the gift of democary and we do whatever to fight of the threat of socialism... you are not entiled to health care maggotss paying taxes for roads and protecting isreal is more important... MAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA FUCK YEAH WE DA #1 in the world bring on WW3 we tha kings murica

it's because they hunted falsifiable into extinction and thus can LARP in such a way.

Bunp

Because his economic theories derived from the "scientific" orthodoxy of the time and his historiography was certainly more scientific than the garbage idealism he was rebelling against. He had all right to pretend to be relatively scientific tbqh.

I wasn't aware that popper existed in Marx's time

Were the means of production seized by the working class?

Go back to Popper cuck

bump