Does Marxism being "scientific" matter? Or does this need to want to cling to science to prove its legitimacy actually hinder its effect? I've been wrestling with this question for the past day and I still don't have a concrete opinion.

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[–] kittin@hexbear.net 22 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Science is an effort to understand the laws of motion and processes of change, describing them in a naturalistic rather than metaphysical way.

Marxism is a social science that describes the process of change in human society, viewing political change as motion in a historical process.

Marxism is also a political critique, revealing and assessing modern power and politics by stripping them of their idealisms and putting them into their historical context, unmasking their brutality and injustice.

Revolutionary Marxism takes this understanding of change as a product of certain natural laws of human society, and then seeks to transcend them in the same way the human understanding of evolution or agriculture can be used to transcend certain evils of the natural world.

You can take Marxism as a science or as a critique, it’s both.