Rejoinder: Methodology and marxism

Rejoinder: Methodology and marxism

HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI Rejoinder: Methodology and Marxism I I am told that I arrived " a t some insightful conclusions by means of a fallacious methodol...

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HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI

Rejoinder: Methodology and Marxism

I I am told that I arrived " a t some insightful conclusions by means of a fallacious methodology." What a delightful prospect! It seems heretical to some of my edfies that one would be allowed to arrive at insightful results by applying "fallacious methodology." Let me be brief; I consider it a fiction that there are royal roads to truth, or that one has to employ some sanctified and sacred methodologies or else one's results are unacceptable. Methodologies are neither fallacious nor truthful. Methodologies are tools. Tools are neither false nor true. They are suitable or they are unsuitable for the task at hand. If they perform the job, they are suitable; if they don't, they are not. There is usually a class of tools better suited for a given task than other tools; but this does not mean that these are the only acceptable tools. Methodologies are rational and tested ways of arriving at results. But they are not algorithmic prescriptions carried forward by means of exact mathematical steps. Methodologies consist of accumulated experience, which is a kind of conceptual residue in the process of problem, solving. Even in physics--the realm where this residue has been accumulated for a long time and considerably refined--scientists and philosophers of science, at least those of distinction, are reluctant to talk about " t h e scientific method," for they know that there is no such thing. This applies even more readily to the other sciences; the SqrODtES IN CO~ARAT[V£ CO~m~NISM

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greater the number of variables and the richer and more complex the nature of phenomena, the less tangible and more tenuous is the methodology of research in a given discipline. This simple truth seems to be ignored in present research. In social science and political science, especially (the realm of Marxology among others), constant methodological exorcism is the order of the day. Methodology is spoken of with reverence and sometimes with awe. Is it because these disciplines suffer from a dearth of positive results that they cling desperately to methodology as a substitute? Obsession with methodology is the plague of present social science. Might it not be the case that methodology is the opiate of the intellectually disoriented? We are not students of methodologies. We must not be obsessed with tools. We are students of problems--I am here echoing Sir Karl Popper, who has insisted throughout his life that what is of importance is problems not methods. Any set of strategies that leads to a solution of a problem is good and acceptable. Moreover, methodology--at any rate, explicit methodology, of which we have become aware--is a set of articulate procedures, actions, and tests for problems which have already been solved. And here lies a great paradox: a good methodology handles well problems that have already been solved, for "good methodology" is a residue of our experience of past problem solving. Insofar as it is good and tested, it is obsolete. For, to repeat, it is good for problems already solved because it is based on solved problems. New problems, the real problems, are the ones for which we have no assured, let alone well-tested, solutions. This is why they are tough and new. There is no methodology for " n e w problems." They take us by surprise, forcing us to devise ever-new strategies and drawing out from us ever-new heuristic resources. The history of mankind and the heuristic skills we have developed in the process are a testimony to the abundance of ever-new problems that have confronted us, usually without much notice. The present plight of social science (political science included) reflects the enormous disparity between the tough new social problems triggered off by technological progress and the pathetically inadequate methodologies that social science would use in taelrling them. Indeed, faced with these problems, social science, as if deliberately, withdraws into the cocoon of methodology. So the observation that methodology is the opiate of the intellectually disoriented acquires a new force. New problems, more often than not, require new strategies and new methodologies. The appraisal of Marxism at the end of the twentieth century is certainly one such problem. These few remarks on new problems and the accepted methodologies should make one perfectly

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aware that Professor Norman Levine's piece is full of methodological exorcisms: " T h e fallaciousness of his [Skolimowski's] methodology is readily exposed in his assumption... ", "There is an inherent contradiction in Skolimowski's model," "Skolimowski's methodology is wrong because it is un-Marxian," " T h e development and evolution of dialectical materialism must be explained by the use of dialectical logic. This Skolimowski does not do. Only by using Marxian methodology can we hope to understand the history of Marxism." Such exorcisms might strike one as sheer dogmatism--shrouded in some confusion. (Fallaciousness of one's methodology cannot be exposed by one's assumptions; models cannot be inherently contradictory if they yield "insightful conclusions "; and what is this dialectical logic which alone must be the basis of good methodology in the study of the vicissitudes of Marxism?) H

Professor Peter Ludz' remarks are of a different kind. He takes me to task for mixing together two different planes of discourse, the descriptive and the normative, and for using semantically confusing terminology. He righty points out with regard to the latter that, on the one hand, I use such terms as "model," "conceptual model," "correlations," "variables," and "matrix," all stemming from the empirical social sciences and empirical theory; and that, on the other hand, I sometimes resort to such terms as "concept," "concept framework," and "classification," which are less specific and which have become nearly common parlance in the social sciences. Well, I am guilty: m e a culpa. How great my sin is, however, I do not know. The methodology of physical science (at least the terminology of this methodology) has invaded social science, and this invasion has reached the region of common parlance. My use of such parlance is an unintended tribute to the worldview I wish to overcome : empiricism and its extensions. Ludz' other point is that I mix the two levels of discourse, the descriptive and the normative. On the one hand, I seem to be describing analytically the existing state of affairs; on the other, I seem to be offering a set of tools for appraisal and dynamic intervention into the nature of present reality. I do not see a contradiction between these two aspects of one's intellectual activity. Indeed, I think that separating the descriptive from the normative (for which we originally have to blame Locke, Hume, and other empiricists), so prevalent in present analytical philosophy and social science, has been a fundamental mistaker We never really merely describe. Our "'analytical knowledge"

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has a normative component built into it. Knowledge is always potent. Merely "descriptive knowledge "" is potent in compelling people to inaction. Thus "analytical knowledge," which inhibits people from action by pointing out that "good descriptions" have nothing to do with "right actions," is the knowledge which (seen in ideological terms) supports the status quo. I am painfully aware that these brief remarks do not at all give justice to such a large and important topic; but in the circumstances they will have to do. Most of Ludz' remarks are very good indeed, and I eagerly endorse them as, really, an extension of my model and my discourse. Ludz rightly points out that at least three reasons prompted me to write my little piece on open Marxism and its consequences: (1) I wanted to establish "distinguishing criteria" for the various kinds of contemporary Marxism; (2) I wished to compare the various streams of contemporary Marxism; and (3) I wanted to find out the limits of Marxism as a homogeneous philosophy. Upon reflection, I have come to the conclusion that there was another reason, perhaps even more important than any of the other three. This reason can be expressed by the question: What has happened to Marxism as an alternative to capitalism, as a possible alternative path for the future of all humanity? This is certainly a much broader and important question than any of the others. I wish to suggest at this point that the inadequacy of the present comparative studies of Marxism, indeed the prevalent confusion concerning the status and meaning of the whole Marxist tradition, is the result not so much of the feebleness of our minds as of the change in the phenomenon itself. We used to define Marxism--its ideology, its worldview, its eschatology--by contrasting it to capitalism. A century after Marx's death, we have come to realize, or perhaps ought to realize, that this strategy is more and more dubious. In other words, changes in the actual world have rendered many a contrast spurious. It is becoming glaringly clear that both capitalism and Marxism are (only slightly different) forms of the same secular ideology; that both are victims of the secular vision of the salvation of man on earth, the vision that we now recognize as lamentably short-sighted. We now see that Marxism (at least as it has been historically pursued) is a form of the technological society, and that as such it is unable to cope effectively either with human alienation or with ecological devastation, mainly because its entire worldview is so " W e s t e r n , " so exploitative and manipulative. This realization has undermined traditional tenets of our thinking about Marxism as an alternative to capitalism, and has produced much confusion in our appraisals of Marxism.

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My schema for the analysis of Marxism has been called "empty formalism." Various discussions of it have nevertheless showed it to be quite potent--therefore, not so empty. I have no doubt in my mind, however, that Karl Marx himself would call this schema "empty formalism," but for reasons different from those given by my learned disputants. Marx was first and foremost preoccupied by and even obsessed with problems. Methodologies meant little to him. And he cut across various disciplines in trying to understand the crucial problems of his time, in trying to see how they were related to each other in their "deep structures." It appears to me that had Marx lived in the present time, he would not have bothered about methodologies, their improvement or refinement, but would have said, " L e t us look at our problems." And he would no doubt have perceived that the original design of reforming only society, leaving the rest of the worldview untouched, was inadequate and short-sighted. He would have perceived and realized that our present problems--that is, those resulting from the evolution of the world over the past century--necessitate not only a change in the structure of society, but also, and above all, a change in our entire exploitative, parasitic, mechanistic, manipulative worldview. This is what my discussion of open Marxism and its consequences attempted to bring to the fore. III Now, a few words about Marxism as a paradigm. Kuhn himself has maintained that the term "paradigm" should be used with regard to science only. Others have thought otherwise; consequently, the term paradigm (a large intellectual structure that subsumes under itself a variety of more specific problems of a given discipline, or a given intellectual formation) has been used outside science. We have discussed society as a paradigm, and even civilizations as paradigmgoverned. Marxism can be discussed in the framework of a paradigm in two senses. It can itself be seen as a specific socio,economic-political paradigm, which interprets the socio-economic reality in a specific way and attempts to restructure this reality according to its perception of what ought to be. As we know, every paradigm after a time suffers exhaustion, the first visible signs of which are the so-called anomalies. A large number of such anomalies appeared in the corpus of Marxism at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. To resolve these anomalies and save the system, some modifications of the system were undertaken, notably by Lenin--hence, MarxismLeninism. However, further anomalies continued to crop up. And there

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comes a moment when the paradigm visibly breaks down. StMinism marks the point of the breakdown of the original Marxist paradigm. However, the term "paradigm" may be used in respect to Marxism in yet another--an even more important--sense. In the first sense, Marxism itself was treated as a paradigm. In the second sense--when we reflect on Marxism from the perspective of the vicissitudes of the whole of Western civilization--we realize that Marxism is a part of a larger paradigm, the paradigm of Western thought in the post-Renaissance era. Reflecting on Marxism along this perspective enables us to see that Marxism was invented to take care of some anomalies of civilization: the socio-eeonomic part of it showed glaring disproportions. Marx decided to mend the situation. From hindsight, we can see that in a sense Marx was used by civilization to prop up its defective parts. The reconstruction did not quite succeed, mainly because the trouble lay much deeper than Marx and his followers had anticipated. It is now clear, from the perspective of a century, that anomalies which Marxism was supposed to mend were not mended. Paradoxically, many of these anomalies were mended by capitalism itself. However, other anomalies, much more serious ones, appeared in the body of social life, of economic life, of political life, and, last but not least, of the individual human life, because, as I have tried to argue, the whole Western paradigm is in trouble. This is my indirect answer to Professor Harvey Klehr, which I hope is direct enough. I fully agree with Klehr's statement that "While raising important issues about the relationship between Marx and Marxism, he [Skolimowski] does not satisfactorily resolve them." Indeed, I do not. Raising important issues might be considered important enough. However, my ambition was to go beyond that, for I wished to show how difficult a task awaits us to "satisfactorily resolve them." I have tried to show, in particular, that to resolve these issues it will not suffice to reshuffle existing categories and build yet another variant of what is---or, to put it differently, to make another adjunct to the present paradigm. The whole paradigm is at stake, and we have to shake ourselves loose, conceptually and morally, from the concepts of the present mold; otherwise we shall be like obscurantist epigones devoting our time and energy, our life and genius, to the exegesis of concepts and categories that have lost their vitality, relevance, and significance. For this reason I consider most, if not all, efforts of present Marxists and neo-Marxists, crypto-Marxists and sub-Marxists, who tenaciously hold to the doctrine, to be doomed. And among these I also include such creative groups as Yugoslav Marxists, who have striven valiantly

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to breathe new vitality into Marxism, but with little effect. I do not deprecate the value of their scholarly work. But resurrect M a r x i s m - they did not! The concept of praxis is not enough. The reason is, as I have argued in my first rejoinder, that we cannot derive the creative substance from an intellectual tradition that has burnt itself out. We have to shake ourselves loose and start to think afresh.